Tag: Elijah

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Christ’s Transfiguration and Its Significance

Mount Tabor, traditional site of Christ's Transfiguration
View of Mt. Tabor, the traditional site of the Transfiguration.

Perhaps Christ’s transfiguration was the most significant biblical event other than the creation and Christ’s resurrection. It is described in Matthew 17:1-8, Mark 9:2-8, and Luke 9:28-36. Three men meet together on a mountain–Moses, Elijah, and Jesus.

The Law and the Prophets were the basis of Judaism. Exodus 24:13-18 tells us that Moses went up on Mount Sinai and received the Law. Deuteronomy 34:6 indicates that he had no known grave. Elijah, the prophet, went up Mount Horeb (Sinai) according to 1 Kings 19:8, where God spoke to him. Like Moses, Elijah had no grave (2 Kings 2:11).

God told the people through the prophet Malachi that the Law and the prophets would lead to Christ (Malachi 4:4-6). In Luke 9:34-35 we read of Christ’s transfiguration and the cloud which symbolized the covering of divine presence. God spoke and said, “This is my beloved Son: hear him.” The message is clear. Don’t let the Law or the prophets guide you–follow Jesus.

To this day, people want to snip out various parts of the Law or the prophets and use them in their religious practices. Jesus said in Matthew 5:17 that He fulfilled the Law and the prophets. Jesus summed up the Law and the prophets in Matthew 7:12 with what we often call the “Golden Rule.” Colossians 2:6-23 states that Jesus blotted out the written code with its regulations by nailing to the cross (verse 14).

Christ’s transfiguration leads us to real freedom. Just as Moses led Israel out of slavery to Egypt, Jesus leads all of us to real freedom from sin. Romans 6:4-23 speaks of Christians having a new life, not a legalistic political system. The Law was impossible to keep perfectly because of human weakness. Romans describes the new life we are called to. We can be completely and totally free by God’s grace and the power of love.

— John N. Clayton © 2020

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Reincarnation and Christianity

Reincarnation and Christianity
Webster’s Dictionary defines reincarnation as “A fresh embodiment, a rebirth in new bodies, or forms of life, the rebirth of a soul in a new body.” Various versions of Hinduism and Buddhism advocate reincarnation in a variety of different forms. There is no justification for bringing reincarnation into the belief system of Christianity, and there is nothing in the Bible that suggests in any way that reincarnation takes place.

There are those who teach that Enoch was reincarnated based on the fact that Hebrews 11:5 says that he was “translated that he should not see death.” This is a reference to Genesis 5:24 which says, “…Enoch walked with God, and he was not; for God took him.” These passages do not say that Enoch lived in a physical form on Earth all over again. He simply didn’t die as we do.

Some people hold up Elijah as an example of reincarnation. In Malachi 4:5 God told Israel, “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.” At the transfiguration when the disciples saw Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah, they remembered the prophecy of Malachi and they asked Jesus about it. Jesus responded, “’…Elijah has already come, and they did not know him but did whatever they wanted. Even so, shall the Son of man suffer because of them.’ Then the disciples understood that he was talking about John the Baptist” (Matthew 17:12-13). John the Baptist had that same Spirit as Elijah, but John was his own person, not Elijah living in a new body.

We seem to confuse the words resurrection and reincarnation. The Bible clearly teaches that we will all be resurrected (John 5:28-29). But 1 Corinthians 15:44 makes it clear that the resurrected body is new, but it is us–not a resurrected body of someone else. Hebrews 9:27 tells us that “…it is appointed to men to die once, and after that comes the judgment.” Reincarnation would suggest more than one death. If the version of reincarnation one holds to is that the reincarnated body is that of an animal, then the whole message of heaven is lost.

I am thankful reincarnation is not true. It would not be encouraging to believe that the best I can hope for after I die is to return to this same contaminated, evil-saturated Earth and live again with all the pain and loss I had to endure the first time around.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

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Atheism and Translation Issues

Elisha’s Spring Fountain at Jericho
Atheists do their best to make the God of the Bible seem to be a heartless, ruthless, barbaric, evil God. We have reviewed many of their attempts over the years. Recently an example cited in an atheist blog demonstrates the difficulties that occur when an old translation is read carelessly. The story is in 2 Kings 2:23-24. The King James translation tells us that as the prophet Elisha was walking a group of “little children came out of the city” and mocked him ridiculing his bald head. According to verse 24 Elisha “cursed them in the name of the Lord” and two bears came out of the woods and tore up 42 of them. If you stop at this point, you could think that the God who caused this was heartless, ruthless, barbaric, and evil. Why should God be so vindictive when all the children were doing is making fun of an old bald preacher?

The truth is that God is not any of those things. The Hebrew word translated “little children” in the King James Version of the Bible is also used to describe Joseph when he was 17 and Joshua when he served in the tabernacle. It is also used to describe David when he fought Goliath and Solomon in 1 Kings 3:7, even though he was married. We aren’t talking about a bunch of six-year-olds, but rather a large group of young warrior-like juveniles who could have done great harm to Elisha. The city they were coming from was Bethel which was a center of idolatry in Israel. In 2 Kings 10:29 we read that Jeroboam established golden calf worship in Bethel. In this story, 42 young thugs come out to attack a prophet of God. That is a far cry from innocent children making fun of an old man. Another important fact in this story is what the young men are saying, “go up you baldhead,” is not about Elisha’s hair line. In verse 11 Elijah was taken up into heaven, and Elisha was left to carry on. In verse 3 the pagan prophets had jeered Elisha because his mentor was going to leave him. They said, “Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head today?” They were saying he would be powerless because Elijah who gave him his authority would be gone.

The rest of the story is that Elisha showed his authority by using the abilities given him by God including miraculously purifying the water from the spring at Jericho. Whenever there is a biblical event that looks foolish or contradictory, we need to examine it more closely. We need to consider who wrote the account, to whom it was written, why it was written, and how the people of the day would have understood it. If you do that, you will find that the Bible is a true, factual, and logical guide that we can rely on. We also learn that the God of the Bible is patient and shows His wrath only when humans refuse to accept anything else.
–John N. Clayton © 2017