MOSES AND ELIJAH

MOSES AND ELIJAH

First, we now look at the men, MOSES AND ELIJAH—Moses, the heroic law-giver of the people; Elijah, the lion-hearted prophet of God. Moses, the founder of the economy in the midst of which Christ carried on His earthly mission up to the point of His rejection; Elijah, the reformer, the messenger of heaven to a decadent age, to a people who were heirs of the oracles, and yet were disobedient to them, to a people of whom it could be said, "They feared Jehovah, and served their own gods," (2 Kings 17:33) to a people who very largely were given over to the worship of Baal, while still professing to have covenant relations with Jehovah, examples of that which was to come about in the church age.

Moses had received the law, and given it to the people. Elijah had called the people back to the law. They were the two most remarkable figures in the whole of the Mosaic economy, the founder and the reformer, the law-giver and the vindicator of its authority, who called the nation to return to its allegiance; men who both had led the people in some great Divine movement, the one initiating a new order of things in the world, the other repeating the prin­ciples upon which that order was based, in the days when the chosen nation had become disobedient.

Yet from what different experiences had they come to the holy mount? This was Moses' first visit to Palestine. Never before had he stood in the land of promise. He had seen it from afar at the close of his work, and now he had come to stand —

“With glory wrapped around

On the hills he never trod,

And speak of the strife which won our life,

With the Incarnate Son of God."

If it is possible in any measure to appreciate the feelings those who dwell in the light of heaven, by those of the dwellers on earth, one can imagine with what keen interest Moses stood upon that holy mount. He had seen it from afar, had led the people almost to the verge of possession, and then had died in the land of Moab, and received the high and holy honor of burial by God. (Jude 9) Centuries had passed, and at last he stood within the land, not having won his way thereunto by the law as given to him on Sinai, but by the infinite grace of God as mani­fested in the Person of His Son, with Whom he now held conversation.

Elijah's experience was very different. In all proba­bility he was familiar with every part of the holy land. He had moved across it, founding the schools of the prophets, and endeavoring therein to prepare men to carry on his ministry when he had departed. He must have loved the land with a great love, wherein once he had stood —as he wrongfully thought—the only man loyal to God.

Now he was back in the land again, but under such different circumstances. He who did not die—for the chariots and horses of fire had separated him from Elisha, and the whirlwind had caught him to the saints' abode—had returned to the earth to talk of the one and only death with the Son of God.