THE LAST HOURS OF MOSES AND ELIJAH

THE LAST HOURS OF MOSES AND ELIJAH

It is interesting to meditate on the subjects which engaged the one about to die and the one about to be translated, and to see how practically we ought to combine the two.

Moses is occupied with a survey of Canaan, and when he has seen it he is to be gathered unto his people.

^[p. 201] He is told to look westward and northward and southward and eastward - a full survey. The vision of the glory to Stephen is the spiritual realisation of all this. To him also it was a preparation for death. How gracious and merciful that, before the dissolution of all nature’s links here, there should be such unfolding and revelation of the future portion!

Now with Elijah I apprehend it was quite different. He knew that he was to be taken up, and therefore his last hours were rather occupied with service than with visions, which would have so amazingly compensated him for the trial of death. He is more in the spirit of the porter watching for the return of the goodman of the house. He is setting all things to rights or occupied with his Master’s concerns to the very last.

I think we see these two lines combined in the apostle Paul. He had surveyed from a hill higher than Pisgah, and therefore longed to depart and be with Christ, and he still had his conversation in heaven, so that from there he looked for the Saviour to change his body of humiliation, and while he did so the Lord’s interests here on earth were even more anxiously his care than ever. Personal consolation is necessary for the one (how else could I cheerfully meet the dissolution of nature?) and the non-intervention of dissolution as presenting itself is necessary for the other. Elijah went on as if he had no personal suffering, and no more had he. Stephen had personal suffering before him, but the vision rendered him, I doubt not, proof against it; otherwise he could not have so calmly prayed for his murderers. May we like Paul have taken with Moses a full survey of the glorious land, and like him also, as Elijah did, be able to occupy ourselves with our Master’s interests to the very last with our lights burning, and watching, and waiting for His coming!