1 KINGS 16 AND 17 (FROM CAC'S NOTES)
[p. 132] 1 KINGS 16 AND 17 (FROM CAC’S NOTES)
It would seem that Ephesus (Revelation 2) answers to the latter part of Solomon’s reign, Jeroboam and his successors to Pergamos dwelling where Satan’s throne was, and Ahab to Thyatira.
“He that has the sharp two-edged sword” (Revelation 2: 12) is like the prophets that came to Israel all through this time.
Just then Jericho was rebuilt. All that had been overthrown by the ministry of the apostles is set up again in bold defiance of God’s curse. The world is looked at as the seat of spiritual powers that are opposed to God. They would be idolatry, philosophy, judaism, strongholds, reasonings, high things that lift themselves up against the knowledge of God. All these powers stood in the way of the gospel when it came into the world. Paul anticipates that the gospel would be met by what pretended to be a gospel, and he pronounces a curse on those who announced it (Galatians 1: 8). The Virgin, the merits of the saints, and all that is opposed to God has taken a christian form. But it is all really self-destructive: “and her children will I kill with death” (Revelation 2: 23).
It is just in that state of things that Elijah appears, “a man of like passions to us”, James 5: 17. That is a man who felt things intensely. God loves a man with deep feeling.
We ought to feel all that is opposed to the knowledge of God. Something terrible is the only thing that will do. The time had not come for God to give up Israel. Elijah knew Him as the God of Israel, and he was thoroughly identified [p. 133] with Jehovah and standing before Him.
But the servant who has the mind of God has to go through testing experiences; he has to prove God for himself. God has His own secret resources, the torrent Cherith and the ravens, “before the Jordan”. He has to prove that death is on the resources of nature. This is a new experience in Israel which could never have been known in normal conditions. We may prove God today in special ways. There are resources reserved for Ahab’s day which were not known in David’s or Solomon’s reigns. Elijah got bread and flesh. For us this would be spiritual food, Christ as come down from heaven and as having come into death. A new kind of humanity must be the food of our hearts. We are to retire — “hide thyself”. I think the torrent represents what is providential in relation to spiritual refreshment. It is providentially ordered that we can come together and that we have ministry — spoken and printed — which is refreshing. But the torrent was not permanent; I suppose all that is outward is only provisional. The thing is to make the best of it while we can. I think the ravens would show that God will use what we do not expect: we must not limit God. He may use a brother you think little of to bring you bread and flesh. What an entire severance from the life of the world it is to feed on Christ! The bread of God is One who is not of the world. Nothing is more blessed than to feel that you can feed on Christ, that He is satisfying. But the flesh is needed also. I understand that to be an intimation that He must come into death that we may pass out from all that we are by the appropriation of His death, to feel that I ought to die; but I can die affectionately in the One who has given His flesh for men. His flesh in John 6 is not that His death meets my conscience and relieves me of sin; it is a way out of all that is spiritually death. I think this is a deep exercise. I find things in me, and things come out of me that are mixed. A great deal [p. 134] may not exactly be flesh in the Roman sense, but is not the life of the heavenly Man. One longs to know experimentally more of that beautiful life which is hidden by the torrent before Jordan.