Today there is much fear in the hearts of people, and they wonder what will happen in the world. The righteous know that the world situation will become much worse before it gets better because God is dealing in the earth.
We are about to see the greatest visitation of the Lord that has ever taken place, as the gospel of the Kingdom is preached to the ends of the world.
That which has been in progress for centuries, but has never been accomplished, will be accomplished within a short time. We are believing for no less than a tidal wave in magnitude that will sweep the earth. It is a time of re-entrenchment.
When God’s people are moving ahead, it is always at a most difficult time, as far as the optimistic outlook is concerned. It is always a time that corresponds to a downward trend of judgment upon others.
God’s people ascend as others descend. We prophesied when Babylon seemed to be flourishing and prospering, while we could hardly make ends meet. Suddenly Babylon’s walls began to crack, and she was in trouble.
Today, the religious world is in trouble economically, as well as spiritually, but God’s people are moving into the greatest time of visitation that they have ever known. I Kings 17 speaks of such a time, a time of judgment upon the wicked and a time of miracle preservation for the people of God.
Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead, said to 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.” And the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Go away from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. And it shall be that you shall drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to provide for you there.” So he went and did according to the word of the Lord, for he went and lived by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he would drink from the brook. I Kings 17:1–6.
Whenever God brings judgment, He brings it through a prophet from among His remnant. God brings judgment according to the word of His people. We must understand that prophecy is not just a predictive vehicle of God, but also a creative vehicle.
Whenever the Lord wants to accomplish something, He sends a prophet and tells him to prophesy: “Prophesy the word of the Lord against Tyre and Sidon. Prophesy the word of the Lord against Babylon. Lift up your voice against Egypt.” What made these great nations fall? Were the prophets merely very clever men who had a little mystical sense or psychic awareness that enabled them to predict events? It was beyond that. They had more than a revelation from the Lord as to what would be; they prophesied events into being.
Ezekiel was carried out and set down in the midst of a valley full of bones where he began to prophesy the word of the Lord. The bones came together, and the flesh and tissue came over the bones. He prophesied and the Spirit breathed upon that bone pile. The bones were resurrected and became an exceeding great army before the Lord (Ezekiel 37:1–10). This prophecy was creative. Those were dead, bleaching bones in a valley. It was more than a predictive prophecy; it became creative.
Elijah said, “It is according to my word. There will not be any rain or dew in the land until God gives the word through me.” We have a great responsibility, for when we stand and prophesy against Babylon, we are not predicting her destruction; we are causing it to happen. When we cry out in the Spirit of the Lord, “Come out of her, O My people. Be not a partaker of her judgments” (Revelation 18:4), we are creating the force that will liberate the slaves from Babylon and enable them to serve the living God.
Elijah the Tishbite said no rain would fall unless it was according to his word. God said, “I want you to go east of the Jordan to the brook Cherith. I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” God had commanded those dirty, carnivorous birds to bring him food. Elijah had the same word of the Lord that we have. When God brings judgment on the earth, we are not only creators of that judgment, but we will be immune from it by the protection the Lord gives us.
Have you ever painted yourself into a corner? You must not do that spiritually. It is a frustrating experience to paint along the floor and find yourself in a corner with no way to get out. You do not want to prophesy the judgments of the Lord into the earth and then find you have hemmed yourself in also. Elijah always had a way out, and so do you. God will make a way in the midst of the days of judgment for His people.
At God’s direction Elijah went to the brook Cherith, and the ravens were commanded to feed him there. You can almost imagine his thinking: “Now, why this brook? There are better brooks elsewhere that have more shade and water. If I am to hole up for a while in these days of judgment, I would rather be at another brook. This brook Cherith does not look very appealing. I think I will go to a different brook.” Elijah would have been very hungry if he reasoned that way because the Lord commanded the ravens to feed him at the brook Cherith.
You can be certain that wherever God directs you to go is exactly where your source of supply is; He has commanded the ravens to feed you there. Your sustenance will always be in the place where the Lord commands you to go. You can count on it. His abundance is directly related to implicit obedience to His word. Never doubt this truth or waver in it.
We read in verses 7–9: And it happened after a while, that the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land. The judgment finally caught up with Elijah, and he was left wondering where the ravens and the water had gone. Elijah thought the Lord had completely forgotten him. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there; behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.”
There is a beautiful lesson in this story of Elijah. The Lord will bless you while the judgments on the world are all about you. While you are on the mountain top receiving food and water every morning and evening, the rest of the world is under judgment. That is a nice way to live: there is judgment in the earth, but you have a little provision, a little blessing. But one day you will find that suddenly your blessing has dried up, that God has dried up your brook. God knows you would never move on to the next blessing if the last blessing is good enough. No man, having drunk old wine, straightway desires new; the old, he says, is better (Luke 5:39). But when a man shakes the bottle and finds it empty, he has to look around for more and take whatever he can find.
When Elijah’s brook dried up and he was getting quite thirsty, the Lord told him to go down to Zarephath. God said that He had told a widow to take care of him there. So he arose and went to Zarephath, and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks; and he called to her and said, “Please get me a little water in a jar, that I may drink.” And as she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.” But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar; and behold, I am gathering a few sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my son, that we may eat it and die.” Verses 10–12.
God had told Elijah that He had commanded a widow lady to take care of him, but something went wrong because when Elijah arrived, she did not know anything about it. She had to be talked into it.
Then Elijah said to her, “Do not fear. …For thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain on the face of the earth.’ ” So she went and did according to the word of Elijah, and she and he and her household ate for many days. The bowl of flour was not exhausted nor did the jar of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke through Elijah. Verses 13–16.
The miracle at the brook Cherith represented a miracle supply in days of judgment. But that miracle had to give way to another type of miracle—a miracle typifying Body ministry. This miracle did not come through the forces of nature; it was ministered as one person ministers to another person. This miracle involved others. In the days to come, God is bringing us into an interdependence that will not be violated. We will need one another very much in the days to come. We will never be able to say to any member, “I have no need of you.” I Corinthians 12:21b.
Our survival will be a Body function miracle. As we believe together and serve the Lord together, there will be some who will have the power to multiply the little that the rest of the Body has; and they, in turn, will survive by means of the miracle. God is requiring of His people in this day a mutual bearing of one another’s burdens. He is requiring that we should be concerned about one another and that we should be prepared to be the source of supply, the source of miracle deliverance for our brothers and sisters.
At this time, much of the Christian world does not appreciate this word. They still cling to a doctrine that has been disproved, both by scriptural example and by present history: that the Christians will be raptured out before any trouble comes.
We have already been in trouble for quite a while. Since 1917 thousands of people have died in Russia, and who knows how many thousands of Christians have died in Communist China since the takeover there? Christians in those countries know the times of troubles are already here. We are already in trouble in the earth. The judgments are beginning to fall. For a little while, the prince of darkness seems to prevail, but then judgment is given to the saints of the most high, and they possess the Kingdom (Daniel 7:21, 22).
This story of the widow feeding Elijah is a beautiful picture of what God will do in this day. The poor widow was to become the instrument by which a prophet was delivered. The prophet probably would have preferred to perform his own miracle. But, God did not allow him to perform a miracle for himself. The Lord was not allowed to turn the stones into bread to satisfy His own hunger (Matthew 4:4). Neither will you be allowed to perform a miracle for your own sustenance. Often it is one of the humblest of God’s people who meets your need. Do not despise the channel of blessing. Sometimes the greatest blessing you can receive comes from the fat, chubby hands of a little child who reaches out to bless you. Do not ever despise the source of the blessings, because the interdependence that God is bringing within the Body is divinely created.
The Apostle Paul wrote in many of his epistles entreating the people to pray for him; his epistles also speak of how he prayed for the people, day and night. No man is allowed to be self-sufficient; he is made the source of supply for his brother, and his brother is made the source of supply for him. That is the way the Body functions.
You may be striving to come to the place where you can walk with God on your own. You will never get there. Remember what Jesus said to Peter after the resurrection: “When you were young, you girded yourself and went where you would; but when you are older, another will gird you and take you where you would not” (John 21:18). Maturity brings you to the place where you no longer serve yourself, nor do you have the right to yourself. The older you become, the more you relinquish the right to yourself.
As a young person grows up, be often gets the idea that he wants to leave home. He wants to be free. He does not want to be under his parents any longer. He leaves home and gets a job so that he can be free, absolutely free. He used to be given room and board; his mother did the washing and cleaned up after him; however, he wanted to be free. Now, he must work hard. He used to borrow his father’s car whenever he wanted it. Now, he has to buy his own car and his own clothes. He must take care of himself. But he is free and independent. Now he can do anything he wants. He can date and marry any girl he wants. While he is calling himself a free man, he gets married. Then children come on the scene, and one day he realizes that he is thoroughly domesticated and subjugated, not to a life of freedom, but to a life of interdependence.
Now it came about after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became sick; and his sickness was so severe, that there was no breath left in him. In other words, the widow’s son died. This is the same widow who was gathering sticks to prepare a last little cake for herself and for her son. Because she befriended a prophet, she was blessed, and the food was supplied. But now a tragedy occurs: her son dies. So she said to Elijah, “What do I have to do with you, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance, and to put my son to death.” Verses 17, 18.
Christians can be easily overwhelmed with self-condemnation. There is some legalism in every one of us. We usually have in our background the idea, “Thou shalt; thou shalt not.” Even as blessings of the Lord begin to come, even in the midst of the sweet sermons on love, we can hear the thunders of Mount Sinai; and we are in fear and trembling because we know that we are unworthy. Somehow, we still arrogantly feel that we can be worthy of God’s blessing; therefore, we fall into the clutches of self condemnation when we find unworthiness in us.
The widow lady cried, “You have come to bring my iniquity to remembrance.” Evidently this woman was not as good a person all her life as she appears to be in the story. For that matter, there is no one, old or young, who can say that he has lived without sin. The woman knew at some time there would be a remembrance of her iniquity, and she thought that her son’s death was God’s dealing, His punishment for her sins.
When things go wrong in their lives, people often attribute it to the punishment of God. When the disciples saw a beggar who had been blind since birth, they wondered who had sinned, the man or his parents, that he was born blind. They wanted to blame someone; either he was at fault or his parents were. Jesus took a different attitude; He said, “That is not the issue. This is for the glory of God, that he be healed” (John 9:1–3).
The widow’s son took sick and died, and she thought Elijah had come to kill her son and make her remember all her sins, How did Elijah respond to this? And he said to her, “Give me your son.”
You may walk with God enjoying the miracles, blessings, and sustenance He brings; but sooner or later, God will begin to deal with you in a drastic way. He will take from you something that you feel is yours.
The widow had lost her husband; the boy was all she had left, and she clung to him. She accused Elijah of coming to kill him, of coming to take him away from her. She thought he came to destroy the only selfish thing she had; the only self-centeredness in her life was wrapped around her boy. She had nothing else to give up, because she had nothing else. Since he was all she had, that made him of great importance to her. But the prophet said, “Give me your son.” And someday a prophet may also say to you, “Give me your son.”
God will deal with you and deal with your family and bring you through drastic circumstances as you strive to walk with Him. If you ask Him what He wants from you, He will say, “Give me your son.” Do you find that you need a miracle every day just to survive? You would not be in such a position if you were not trying to walk with God. You believe God, you step out in faith, but you find yourself like a cartoon character walking off a cliff and not realizing it until you look down. Once you realize that there is no longer a mountain under you, down you go. You trust God, and He provides for you every day. You are walking along fine, and your “son” is blessed; but suddenly he is dead, and God says to you, “Give me your son.”
Then he took him from her bosom and carried him up to the upper room where he was living, and laid him on his own bed. And he called to the Lord and said, “O Lord my God, hast Thou also brought calamity to the widow with whom I am staying, by causing her son to die?” Verses 19–20. Notice how Elijah phrased his question: “Hast thou also brought calamity?” Elijah assumed that he had all the calamity.
Then he stretched himself upon the child three times. …And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him and he revived. And Elijah took the child, and brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother; and Elijah said, “See, your son is alive.” Verses 21–23.
Why did Elijah stretch himself over the little boy’s body three times? It is symbolic of the deliverance that God wants to bring to us; it is threefold. God wants to bring to us a deliverance in spirit, soul, and body. The three times indicate that God will not bring the kind of resurrection that is a reanimation of the physical; God is bringing a total deliverance that involves the whole being. There is a deep significance in this.
The desperate means brought a drastic deliverance. Elijah brought the boy to his mother, saying, “See, your son is alive.” Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” Verse 24.
In the days to come the world will face many judgments. But the Lord can supply a way of survival in the midst of judgment. It begins with God’s dealing with our hearts. There will be a miracle supply. There will be ways in which God brings deliverance as the Body believes for one another.
You will face difficult battles and dealings; but if you do not walk with God, you will be a victim of the famine. Either you will submit to God’s ways of deliverance and His dealings with you, or you will be a partaker of the judgments that will be in the earth. If you jump out of God’s frying pan, you will land in the fire. You had better submit to the Lord. The worst that can happen to you with God is far better than the best that can happen to you in the world, for even the dealings of the Lord are freighted with mercy and blessing. This seems to be a left-handed way of saying things could be a lot worse.
You will be surprised at the capacity God will produce within you to survive, to endure, to be faithful. His grace will be sufficient for you in every need (II Corinthians 12:9). In everything that befalls you, His hand will be upon you. God will not perform the miracle in changing the circumstances around you; the miracle will be the change in you. You will survive because God puts the grace and the strength in you. It is one thing to walk through a fiery furnace wearing a special asbestos suit made by the angels, but it is quite another to go through the fire with no asbestos suit, and tied hand and foot. The three Hebrew children were thrown in bound, but they came out with just their bonds burnt off. Their hair was not even singed. No smell of smoke was on them (Daniel 3:27). God wants you to be the miracle.
Who are these, Lord? These are they who have come out of great tribulation and have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14). May God give us grace to be His faithful people, and may He open our hearts to see what He wants.