The Skeptic's View

Elijah had given Elisha the condition that "If you're there looking while I'm lifted up into the heavens, you will indeed receive what you have asked for, which is a very hard thing. You've asked for a double portion of the spirit with which God has endowed me". If you go back to 1 Kings 19, that conversation takes place. Elijah walks into this family home and the farming setting where this young Elisha was plowing. And in a very ceremonial and metaphorical sense, he passes on the mantle because Elijah knows the end is coming for him, and he goes and looks for Elisha, who's plowing with the oxen. And he takes his cloak and throws it onto the younger man.

The young man knew exactly what the implications were, and he ran after Elijah and wanted to know if he could just go back and talk to his parents a while before he left. And Elijah just told him to go and do what he felt he needed to do, and he said, "You can then follow me". Elisha goes back, offers a sacrifice with the oxen, and the next scene is Elisha following Elijah wherever he went, from Gilgal to Jericho to Jordan and Bethel. All of these places where there were divine visitations to remind him of all of the implications of those encounters. He saw the power of God, he witnessed the presence of God, he saw the sovereignty of God: all of these truths that Elijah was passing on to him in these geographical locations.

And finally, when he said, "I want a double portion of your spirit". Elijah said, "You have asked a hard thing: but if you will see me when I am lifted up, God will honor that". And if you track the lives of these two men, you will see numerically and functionally Elisha, in many, many ways, eclipsed that of this thundering prophet we know as Elijah, who'd stood before the prophets of Baal, who'd stood before Ahab and Jezebel and now as his time had come to go on, the next time you see Elijah really, after he's lifted up by the chariots that God sends for him, is when he sits his foot in the Promised Land on the Mount of Transfiguration when he comes with Moses and Peter is just overwhelmed by the presence of the two people for whom God himself was the undertaker: Moses and Elijah, who were just lifted up into the heavens.

But what happens here is a remarkable story in 2 Kings 6. I'll just read it for you. What's happening is that the band of attackers are coming from Aram constantly. The Aramians were the enemies that were doing away. We heard that the Amalakites yesterday, the Aramians were also amongst those who gave the Israelites a hard time. And the king of Aram is puzzled that every time he makes a plan, the king of Israel seems to know it. And so he's looking at his confidants and he says, "Who of you is a betrayer? Which of you is going around and telling him or telling them all that's going to happen?”. They said, "It's not any one of us, king. The fact of the matter is he's got a man by the name of Elisha, the servant of the Lord, and he seems to know in secret whatever you plan in secret for yourself". And the king rather foolishly says, "We're going to get him. Let's make a secret plan and go and get Elisha".

Now, this is the very man who knows all that's planned secretly, so here's what happens in verse 27 when he finishes saying, "None of us, my Lord," and then in verse 13 it says, after verse 12 of 2 kings 6, "Go and find out where he is", the king ordered, "And so I can capture him". Then he sent horses and chariots and a strong force there. They went by night and surrounded the city. When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early in the morning (this is Elisha's right hand man) and went out early in the morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. "O my Lord," he said, "What shall we do," the servant asked. "Don't be afraid," the prophet answered. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them". And Elisha prayed, "O Lord, open his eyes so that he may see". Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes and he looked and he saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

You know, there's plenty of so-called Christianity in this world that it's pathetically fashionable, superficially showy, and boringly trite. It turns my stomach as well as it turns yours, and I don't mind it the least if you tell me how much it turns yours. But the existence of 1.000 fakes does not mean there is no such thing as a genuine diamond, and the Christianity I'm writing to you about, says he, is what Jesus talks about in the Bible, and that's what interests me. Listen to the description: pathetically fashionable, superficially showy, and boringly trite. That's the way Christianity is often viewed by the skeptic.

-Ravi Zacharias (The Skeptic's View)