ELIJAH THE TISHBITE by Henry A. Lavely

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 27, 1898

ELIJAH THE TISHBITE.

By Henry A. Lavely

As GOD counts greatness, history, sacred or profane, does not furnish a greater than Elijah the Tishbite. He was great in his life; he was greater in his translation, for, like Enoch, “He was not, for God took him.” He was great in his life, whether we see him obeying the command of the angel of the Lord to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and twice calling down fire from heaven, consuming the captains and their fifty followers, or whether we see him taking his mantle and wrapping it together and smiting the river Jordan until the waters were divided and he and Elisha went over on dry ground.

But he was greater in his translation, for it has only been given to two men, Enoch and Elijah, to possess in a peculiar sense everlasting life, for all the sons of Adam have passed or shall pass through the portals of the tomb to the world beyond. Even Christ Himself, who is the resurrection and the life, went down into the silent grave, and tasted the power of the “king of terrors.” But Elijah, seated upon a chariot of fire, grander than the imagination can conceive, was transported even up to the great white throne itself; and the sound of no last trump will be required to summon him from the dreary prison-house of the dead.

But this glory does not end here, nor is his chariot forever lost to sight as it disappears in the blue ether. Summoned with Moses, Elijah is permitted to see the glory of the Son of God upon the Mount of Transfiguration, and to talk with Him of the wonderful death which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.

O wonderfully gifted man! To be wafted to heaven in a chariot of fire was grand! To spend long years in the society of God and

high archangels was grander! But if possible it was grander still to stand in that glittering company, in the midst of which was the great Redeemer Himself, discoursing of the great sacrifice He was about to make! O, how human greatness pales its ineffectual fires before such a scene as this! How the possibilities of the soul expand and glow as we “behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”!—Henry A. Lavely, in Christian Work.