The Power of His Resurrection # 19

Elisha and the Sons of the Prophets (continued)

These schools of the prophets were set up with a view to preparing men to declare in a direct way the mind of God. There were other things which were associated with that, such as the spiritual history of their people, and of the world, from the Divine standpoint. Read the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, of Jonah, Haggai and Daniel, and you will see how much  there is of history, direct or indirect, which has been a studied thing. Daniel tells us he was made to know by books, and he mentions in particular his study of Jeremiah. He had come to a knowledge of things through those prophecies, and when you look at Jeremiah, you find that there is a good deal of history in his writing. So that an additional object for which the schools of the prophets came into being was the teaching of "spiritual history."

Then there was a further aspect of things bound up with these matters, which we might call spiritual patriotism. We emphasize the word "spiritual" since it indicates that God had chosen a people; that God had separated a people; that that people represented something for God in the midst of the nations, and that God was jealous over them because of what they represented for Him. Therefore the prophets were on fire with a holy jealousy that that people should fulfill its Divine vocation. That was the nature of their spiritual patriotism. They were jealous for Israel, because of Israel's Divine vocation. In the schools of the prophets, that which we call "spiritual patriotism" seems to have been nurtured and cherished.

These were, shall we say, incidental, subsidiary matters in the schools of the prophets. The primary function was that which is the very essence of prophetic ministry, that is, the revelation of the mind of God by inspiration. Not revelation merely by study, by the deductions of the human mind, but revelation by inspiration; revealing the mind of God, because the mind of God had been revealed by the Spirit of God.

Thus the prophets stood as the instrument of Divine representation, the means by which God's thoughts, God's desires, God's will, should not only be proclaimed, but represented. The prophet should be not merely a spokesman, but the embodiment of the truth to be spoken. So we find that the Lord took the prophets through experiences in which the very message entrusted to them was brought out in their own hearts, so that they should be not only spokesmen, but living representations of the truth.

That brings us back to the schools of the prophets i Elisha's day, and we see that they were for that purpose, to produce men who were representatives of the Divine thought in a living way. You have there the starting point for the relationship between Elisha and these sons of the prophets.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 20)