OUR BIBLE BAND

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 3, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 17.

Schedule for Week Ending May 14 | Sunday | May 8 | 1 Kings 22 | | | | 2 Kings 1, 2 | | Monday | " 9 | " 3-5 | | Tuesday | " 10 | " 6-8 | | Wednesday | " 11 | " 9-11 | | Thursday | " 12 | " 12-14 | | Friday | " 13 | " 15-17 | | Sabbath | " 14 | " 18-20 |

OUR lesson begins with the 27th chapter of 1 Kings, and closes with the 20th chapter of 2 Kings. We will not take the time or the space to go over this lesson in detail. Our Band readers will gather the lessons as they go over the wonderfully interesting chapters. They will take note of this—that the books of Kings are much fuller in the history of Israel than in the history of Judah, while Chronicles, which follow, are much fuller in the history of Judah than that of Israel.

NOTWITHSTANDING the awful wickedness manifest in Israel among its rulers and its people, note that God has not forsaken them; that He sends His prophets again and again with warnings; that these prophets go right to the very fountainhead of wickedness, the kings, and warn the kings of the sure doom that is to follow; yet sin is so strong and so deceptive that these kings walk in the way of the other kings whose fearful example and awful end was a part of the history of their realm.

THIS lesson brings us to the translation of Elijah to heaven. At one time, in his discouragement the great prophet asked that he might die; but God honors him by not answering the prayer of discouragement. He does not pass through the grave; the chariots of God are sent to take him to heaven without tasting death. He in that way is a type of those who will be translated when Christ comes, and as such type appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration with Moses. See Matthew 17.

FOLLOWING Elijah was the faithful Elisha, who labored for his beloved Israel all his life, and yet is forced to see the constant downward tendency of kingdom and people.

CHAPTER 17 brings us to the end of the ten-tribed kingdom, when the king of Assyria sweeps down upon them, takes all the leaders and the principal ones of the people, and scatters them in various provinces of his realm. Some of these, we learn in later scriptures, returned unto Judah, doubtless some of each one of the tribes, so that God's people were represented in the remnant which were left in Judah. From that time on, the books of Kings deal of course with Judah, the 20th chapter closing with the account of Hezekiah's sickness, his prayer, his healing, and the wonderful miracle which God wrought for him, and the great mistake which he made in showing the Babylonian representatives the riches of his kingdom rather than recounting to them the riches of God's grace. It was a wonderful opportunity which Hezekiah had of giving the Gospel to Babylon. He missed it, and then his seed had to give that same message in captivity.