Prophet Pearls #41 -Pinchas- 1 Kings 18:46-19:21

This week’s Prophet reading—traditionally called the Haftorah—is 1 Kings 18:46–19:21. It accompanies the Torah portion Pinchas (Numbers 25:10–30:1).

This week’s Haftorah deals with the aftermath of the prophet Elijah’s epic defeat of the prophets of Baal. Upon hearing Queen Jezebel’s death threat, Elijah flees to Horeb, the mountain of God, where he encounters the Almighty and receives instructions on what he is to do next. The passage concludes with Elijah’s designation of Elisha as his assistant. Listen to Keith Johnson and Nehemia Gordon as they discover priceless gems in this installment of Prophet Pearls: Exploring Biblical Prophecy for Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

If you would like to listen to Keith and Nehemia discuss the Torah portions that correlate to the Prophet portions here are the original Torah Pearls programs recorded in 2011-2012.

Transcript

Prophet Pearls #41 - Pinchas (1 Kings 18:46-19:21)

You are listening to Prophet Pearls with Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson. Exploring biblical prophesy for yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Nehemia: Welcome to the Prophet Pearls, recorded live in the city of the prophets, Yerushalayim, Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel and the Jewish people. This is Nehemia Gordon in the safe house with Keith Johnson.

Keith: We’re here, Nehemia, and I’m asking this simple question. Are we ever going to be able to get through this section that we’re about to do? I mean, there’s so many… We have stories about the section more than even about the section itself, that literally could take up the whole show.

Nehemia: Do a section about the section more than about the section? [laughing]

Keith: Yes, the section about the section. The testimony about the section.

Nehemia: The testimony about the testimony. Okay. Yes, no, this is a great one. But yes, let’s do it.

Keith: Well, before we get started, we have to say thanks to Rina…

Nehemia: Thanks Rina.

Keith: …who is our Prophet Pearl Partner, and also Rick’s got comments that we’re going to ask him to make available. Rick, thank you so much for everything. We want you to make those available at both sites, because when we get comments like these, we want them to be posted so other people can interact with them and we can have kind of like a community conversation.

Nehemia: Join the conversation!

Keith: Join the conversation. But I want to thank everybody that’s willing to do what Rick has done, which is to make those comments, and those folks that are Prophet Pearls Partners, thank you so much. This is no small thing that we’re doing, we’re actually in the middle of putting together all of these within a two-week period of time. We prepared ahead of time. This is one, Nehemia, we didn’t just prepare - we actually lived it.

Nehemia: We experienced it.

Keith: Yes, we experienced it - 18:46. And again, with the English and Hebrew, and before we get into the story, one little simple thing that I really like - when it says in English this, 18:46 says, “The power of Yehovah came upon Elijah.” And I look in Hebrew and it says “Vayad Yehovah” came upon Eliyahu. The hand of Yehovah was upon him. And I think, “Wow,” I mean, think about that - hand and power. I mean, these images of that, but just the thought of the hand of Yehovah being upon a person as a result of that, it was being translated as “power” but that really is what’s catapulting him. He’s got God’s hand on him. God’s hand is on his life. Literally.

Nehemia: I guess not literally, but figuratively, spiritually. [laughing]

Keith: Yes. I should say that.

Keith: Anyway. Then it starts in 19:1. So now in Hebrew, this is again… we’ve talked a lot about this with these verses and chapters and all that sort of thing. But here it ends, 18:46 and then 19:1, and I’ll read the first one, if that’s okay.

Nehemia: Please.

Keith: “So Ahab goes home and tells…” it’s really kind of funny. You know, if you haven’t heard the first section, they really need to hear the first section. We recorded the first section, I don’t remember even when we recorded it. Do you remember when that was?

Nehemia: That would’ve been many moons ago. It was Episode 21. It was actually the first one we did here in the safe house. Episode 21, it was the portion on Ki Tisa.

Keith: Ah!

Nehemia: And now we are currently on episode 41, it was literally 20 episodes ago. This is the portion of Pinchas, which is Number 25:10 to 30 verse 1.

Keith: So again, the Original Torah Pearls, they can listen to that. So literally there are a couple of things they can do. They can listen to the Original Torah Pearls, but more importantly Prophet Pearls number 21, which we’ll give in the first part of this, which we’ve already discussed.

Nehemia: Isn’t it interesting that whoever decided on this tradition of reading the portions in public, they decided on this section here, this contiguous, continual section, but then they took a break in the middle of 20 episodes, 20 weeks, then even there they skipped a few verses, meaning the last one they did - and I know you were vexed about that…

Keith: I’m very vexed.

Nehemia: …the last one ends in verse 39, and this portion begins in verse 46. And wouldn’t that be great at some point in the future to do like a discussion or a teaching just on the missing verses? There must be an agenda.

Keith: They’re worth it on the missing verses. But anyway, now this is kind of funny to me, because Ahab, after this whole thing happens, if you heard the story, you guys know what happened, they basically had the contest up there and Ahab goes home and tells him.

Nehemia: The contest on Mount Carmel, for those who don’t…

Keith: “Now Ahab goes and tells Jezebel everything Elijah had done, and how he killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a message to Elijah to say, ‘May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely.’” Isn’t that funny?

Nehemia: We could just spend the rest of the time in these two or three verses.

Keith: No, this is interesting, “May the gods deal with me be it ever so severely if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.” Now let me just give you the story. People talk about Jezebel all the time, “The spirit of Jezebel, the spirit of Jezebel.” But this, man, I have to be honest with you. [laughing]

Nehemia: I learned that from your people.

Keith: I don’t know where you got it from, but I’m just saying, here’s the point - in this story, I got this little weakling like Ahab, he’s the king! He’s the king. And he comes and says, [sniveling] “He killed the prophets and…” “I’ll handle him!” [laughing] It’s like she says, “I’ll take care of him!”

Nehemia: Is she wearing the pants in the family?

Keith: She’s wearing the pants and she’s doing everything else, and she says, “May it be by this time tomorrow,” I mean, she’s being prophetic. She’s saying “By this time tomorrow, may you be like one of the prophets.” I mean, she really is running the show. He comes home and tells her. He’s the king.

Nehemia: So are you saying she is the Anti-Deborah? The Anti-Devorah? Because we had Deborah, Devorah who is sort of like this… I don’t want to use the word feminist, but the way you’re presenting, it’s almost like there’s this feminist picture of this queen - not queen, excuse me - this prophetess. She’s judging, she does everything a man can do, but then when it comes time for war, the man goes out and he doesn’t have enough confidence, so she says “The victory will be in the hand of a woman” - not her, Ya’el. This is almost like the Anti-Deborah; can we say that?

Can I make a confession? I’ve made fun of Keith for the whole feminist thing, but just this weekend - I don’t know if you know this, Keith - my sister Ariela, who’s a professor, my oldest sister, she’s a professor at Hadassah College in Jerusalem, and the head of the Optometry Department and a researcher there. And there was an article in the Israeli newspaper about her, and it was called something like A Feminist in Academia.

Keith: You kept that article from me? No, I haven’t seen this article. I want to read it. No, what are you talking about? Folks, maybe next week we’ll get it. I’m going to read the article.

Nehemia: Can I quote what my sister said? I’m really proud of my sister, she’s accomplished quite a bit. One of the things they were talking about, which I think is a very legitimate issue, is that women are underrepresented in Israeli academia. And here’s what she said, this is the quote from her. It says “What we do in our personal lives influences society at large.” It’s like she read the book A Prayer to Our Father, we talked about that. “I hope I serve as a role model for other women at the head of the Optometry Department at Hadassah College, but my most important job is as a mother of five children and as a spouse to an amazing man.” This is my sister saying it. “I think there are a number of things that contributed to the successes I’ve had so far beyond hard work. One of them is connected to the fact that my parents raised me with a view according to which women and men deserve equal rights and opportunities. A message I’m interested in communicating to my staff and students through my work at the college.” I’m very proud of my sister…

Keith: I would like her to communicate it to her brother. No, I love this!

Nehemia: I love it too, and here’s the point I want to make. What I’ve seen in the… and I say your people, I mean the Methodist, I mean the Christian world. In the non-Jewish world, what I see is people will say, “Spirit of Jezebel”. What they mean by that is a woman who actually speaks out and is proactive and isn’t passive. And that’s a complete perversion of what the message is that we’re reading about in the book of Kings, about the spirit. There is a spirit of Jezebel, but the spirit of Jezebel is the opposite of the spirit of Devorah, of Deborah. Devorah was a prophetess. She spoke the word of Yehovah. She sat and she judged both men and women under the date tree. She judged righteously and honestly.

And Jezebel is the exact opposite. Jezebel is a woman who wants something, she brings false witnesses. Isn’t that interesting. Here you have a judge who judges righteously, Deborah, Devorah, the Israelite, and then you have the Sidonian princess who brings false witnesses. They’re both involved in judgment, both involved in cases. And it’s not that Jezebel is a feminist and a woman who isn’t afraid to speak out - that’s a beautiful thing. That’s the spirit of Devorah, of Deborah.

The spirit of Jezebel is lies and corruption…

Keith: Deception and all that stuff, yeah.

Nehemia: …and perversion, and deception. That is the spirit of Jezebel attacking the people of God, supplanting the true prophets with the false prophets. That’s the spirit of Jezebel. Don’t use that term. Please, people, don’t use that word, “spirit of Jezebel” as part of some anti-feminist agenda.

Because you know what? My father, the Orthodox rabbi, he taught me, and I completely stand by this, that God created both men and women in the image of God. Tzelem Elohim, we say in Hebrew, “the image of God”. And we’re both called to a purpose. We had Miriam the prophetess, we just spoke about last week, I think it was, where she’s alongside her brothers, Moses and Aaron, we’re told that this is… God sent three prophets, not just one.

So I think in the spirit of Ariela, my sister, and in the spirit of Devorah, let’s recognize this evil spirit of Jezebel, but let’s not pervert it and corrupt it for our own personal agendas.

Keith: Amen. You know, it’s interesting - when she does do this, when Jezebel does do this, and this is really one of these things, Nehemia, that I want us to take just a minute with and see if maybe there could be an interpretation for why this is the case. But it says when Elijah heard this statement, in the NIV, it says, “Elijah was afraid,” and actually the verb is “to see.”

Nehemia: What verse are you in?

Keith: It’s in verse 3, 19 verse 3.

Nehemia: How’d you get to verse 3? We didn’t talk about verse 2, 1:2 yet.

Keith: I just got through talking about it. Verse 1 and 2. Okay, got you. I thought you were doing your big thing about she was saying what she was doing about Jezebel and all that.

Nehemia: So here’s what I want to talk about verses 1… First of all, I want to talk about Jezebel, because we gave a little bit of her background last time, in episode 21, but maybe people don’t remember that. She was a Sidonian Princess. Here’s what’s amazing to me about the story - we’ve got this encounter at Mount Carmel, and the fire comes down and it burns the offering of Elijah, and then the people say, “Okay, God’s with Elijah.” We actually skipped this part, because it was in the missing verses, but they slaughtered the 400 prophets of Baal down in Nachal Kishon, in the Kishon River, and Jezebel hears about this.

Now, what would you do if you were Jezebel? If I were Jezebel, and I just heard the 400 prophets I believed in were shown to be false prophets, and God sent a fire down from heaven and consumed the sacrifice, I’d say, “Wow, I was wrong.” And I would take my fist and I would beat it against my chest and say, “Ashamti, bagadeti.” “I have been guilty…” This is what we do in Jewish tradition on the High Holidays - we beat our chest and we repent. We say, “we were wrong”. Jezebel doesn’t do that. She doesn’t repent. Isn’t that interesting?

Keith: Not at all. That’s not interesting to me at all.

Nehemia: To me that’s shocking!

Keith: Jezebel - her background and everything about her wouldn’t say to me that she would repent. Everything about her would say that she’d do exactly what she’s doing.

Nehemia: I want to talk about her background. Do you remember the name of her father? The name of her father was Et Baal.

Keith: Et Baal, yes.

Nehemia: Now, Baal, we know what it means - it’s the name of that deity. And you know, the Canaanite language of the Sidonians was a sister language to Hebrew. It was probably 90% overlapping with Hebrew, to the point where if you would write out in Hebrew letters the Canaanite language, most Israeli high school students would understand most of what they read. There’d be things they didn’t understand, but they’d understand most of it.

So it’s very similar to Hebrew. So just like in Hebrew, we have these compound names, like “Nechemiah” means “Ya comforts”, or even the name Elijah, Eliyahu, Yehovah is my God, my God is Yehovah ‘Eli’, my God, ‘Yahu’. So the name of her father, Izevel, is Et Baal, which is really interesting, because the name is Aleph-Tav-Baal.

And what does ‘Et’ mean? Et, we’ve talked about, is a Hebrew word, doesn’t really translate into English directly. It translates through syntax. It has two functions. I don’t know if you know this, “et” can mark the direct object or it can mean “with”. The name of her father is “with Baal”, Et Baal. And this is the point - Jezebel was with Baal no matter what.

Keith: Exactly

Nehemia: She lost the fight. Doesn’t matter. She’s going to stick with Baal.

Keith: That’s why I say it doesn’t surprise me, meaning that this is who she is. And it shows us before this happens and it shows us after this happens that that’s exactly who she is.

Nehemia: This is the spirit of Baal, or the spirit of Izevel, of Jezebel, the spirit of Jezebel is to stick with your false doctrine, your false religion out of this blind devotion even when it’s been proven wrong by experience. And I want to talk about what she says in verse 2. She says, “Ko ya’asun Elohim vechol yosifun.” Which is really interesting. She uses this word Elohim. Now whenever an Israelites speaks about Elohim, it’s always what we call the majestic plural, which really means it only refers to one. How do I know that? Because we have a verb, an adjective and a pronoun that attaches to the word Elohim, and those are always singular. You can go read my study on that, Elohim, it’s on Nehemiaswall.com.

But when Jezebel speaks about Elohim, the verb is plural. She doesn’t say. “Ko ya’ase Elohim vecho yosif” she says “ko ya’asun” - they will do, literally “thus they, Elohim, will do and so they shall do even more.” She’s making an oath here. This is an oath; we see a similar oath Israelites making, but then it’s always in the singular. When Jezebel speaks, God is in the plural. By the way, the Philistines do the same thing in 1 Samuel chapter 4 verse 8, they say, “Woe to us. Who shall save us from the hands of these great Elohim,” “these” plural, and the great in Hebrew is plural as well. “These Elohim, are they that smote the Egyptians with every plague in the desert.” So it’s when the Philistines and Sidonians speak, Elohim is plural. When an Israelite speaks Elohim, it’s “Bereshit bara Elohim.” In the beginning, He created, Elohim, instead of bar’u, they created Elohim. God is singular. Elohim is singular, majestic plural in the Hebrew.

Keith: Amen. Well, are you ready to get to work? When I say get to work, I mean this is going to take a little tap tap. Are you in the mood where you can do a tap tap? While you’re preparing for that, I really think this is interesting because if I read this, and this is what I love, folks, as you’re listening, I really love to do Bible study. What I mean by Bible study is where I would take a verse or a passage and I would look at it in the original language, but I’d also look at it in the translations, because oftentimes the translations do something really cool, actually.

Nehemia: What do they do?

Keith: They give me an indicator of what the thinking is regarding a passage or a phrase, and what the options are for a passage or phrase, and why they do that, and that sometimes gives me some indication to think differently. Like, I’ll give you an example as you’re preparing, as you get this.

Nehemia: I’m ready. What have you got?

Keith: In 19:3 in English it says, “Elijah was afraid.” And if I just take “Elijah was afraid”, and the word here in English in 3 is the same word we use for “to see”.

Nehemia: About that…

Keith: About that. Now just one second. One second. So when you first just casually look at this, you say, “Oh, okay, so let’s go a little farther.”

Nehemia: What word are you talking about?

Keith: Hold on just one second. So we have to go a little bit further, and we have to say, “Okay, so when you say that…” You go to a word and you look at the word and say, “Okay, is the root of this word the same word as the word that we think?” So, is it the word “to see”? Ra’a. Raysh-Aleph-Hey? And in this situation, you’ve got to make a decision. Now why I say I love to do Bible study - I’m just talking about from a casual standpoint - so first when I look at the NIV, it says, “Elijah was afraid and he rose,” and then it uses the word “to go” or “to walk”, and they use the word “run”. They say in the NIV it says, “and he ran for his life.”

Now, this is the phrase, one, two, three, four, five words. Before we go any further. Now what I want to do is I want you to tap, tap. So I want you to look at these one, two, three, four, five words, and give me a translation based on the words… how good is the NIV there. “And He was afraid and he rose up and he ran for his life.”

Nehemia: Yes, so it doesn’t say he was afraid. It says “and he saw.” Right. And what they’ve done in the NIV is they’ve changed the vowels to fit their agenda. I’m not entirely sure what the agenda is, or maybe they just don’t know Hebrew well enough, that’s also possible.

So in Hebrew you can have these four letters, Vav-Yud-Raysh-Aleph, and if you didn’t have vowels, you wouldn’t know if it was “and he saw” or “and he was afraid and he feared.” The reason is that we have two different roots in Hebrew which are not homonyms. Homonyms are two words that sound the same. But they’re homographs, which means they look the same. They look the same if there are no vowels, in certain forms.

We have the root Raysh-Aleph-Hey, which is to see, ‘ra’ah’, and we have the root Yud-Raysh-Aleph yareh, which is to fear. Those don’t even look the same, Raysh-Aleph-Hey and Yud-Raysh-Aleph, except, “and he saw” is vayar, Vav-Yud-Raysh-Aleph, and he feared is vayeera, Vav-Yud-Raysh-Aleph. Same four letters, same four consonants, what’s different is the vowels.

So vayar is “and he saw” in this verse, but an example of, “and he feared” would be for… Actually, let me give you first an example of that. Genesis 1:4 “Vayar Elohim et ha’or ki tov”, “And God saw the light that it was good.” Okay. But then you have vayeera, “and he feared”, for example, in Genesis 28:17. Let’s see, what is Genesis 28:17 speaking about? Here, this is the JPS. It says “‘Shaken,’ he said, ‘how awesome is this place?’” This is, I guess Jacob.

In the King James it says, “And he was afraid and said, ‘How dreadful is this place?’” Okay. So this is Jacob when he’s fleeing, and I guess he’s in Bethel or someplace like that.

Anyway, so, “vayeera” is “and he feared”. Now, the interesting thing in Genesis 28:17 is there is a silent Yud, and that silent Yud tells the reader, even if there are no vowels, that it’s, “and he feared.” They call this an “historic spelling.” It’s not really historic, but in the sense it tells me, “Here’s the root. You’re not going to pronounce it. But when you see it, you’ll know this is the root.” For example, Bereshit with that silent Aleph tells me that that’s the Aleph for the root, even though it’s silent. But as far as how it’s pronounced, it’s pronounced the same way. Did that answer your question?

Keith: Yes. The reason I brought this up was because when I read this in the NIV, my first thought was I had a little bit of a conflict, because the conflict was, here Elijah just did all this stuff. I mean, he did some amazing things. He’s standing up against 800 and some prophets. I mean, it’s obviously a tense situation, and I see this confidence and all this, and then the word says, “and the hand of Yehovah was upon him”, in English it says, “and the power of Yehovah was upon him.” So this is Elijah.

And then you got this yapping Jezebel, who’s upset, and she’s threatening him and she’s doing all of these things, and then when it says he’s afraid, I’m thinking, “Wait, is that really what the situation is?” When I think of, “and he saw”, I’m like, he’s looking around, he’s looking and he’s saying, “Okay, this is my situation. This is the situation that I’m in.” And it gives me a different thought about Elijah. To think of him being afraid and to think of the fact that he saw a situation and he responded. Sometimes, and I’ll just say this this way, sometimes we do need to know what our situation is. You’ve got to look around and say, “Okay, what am I dealing with? Am I done with my mission here? I’ve battled the prophets of Baal. I’ve done this and now I’m going to go do my next thing.” Or was it just, okay, because now she spoke, he’s afraid and he’s running for his life?

Nehemia: And you’re making a big deal about this false translation.

Keith: No, no, no. Not about the translation. No, no, no. Actually I’m not making…

Nehemia: Whereas for example, the JPS has it, “frightened”. Oh, so that’s the same mistake. What the heck?

Keith: No, no, no. It’s not the mistake. No, no. The point I was trying to make was…

Nehemia: Oh, so King James has “when he saw”, so the King James has it right.

Keith: Right, right, right. I wasn’t even dealing with the fact of the mistake, I was dealing with the fact of how I would read it differently. Okay. Like when I see it, I think, “Wow, okay, he’s afraid, or he saw,” and what’s the difference between the two? There is a difference.

Nehemia: Right.

Keith: I mean, if I see a situation I’m like, “Okay, now is it time to move on? The danger is about to come,” versus, “and I’m just afraid of Jezebel.”

Nehemia: So I have to say most of the translations have “afraid” or “fear”, and then the King James and the new King James has the “saw”. I guess contextually, it doesn’t make sense then that he saw; what did he see? But he saw Jezebel’s reaction. Maybe he was just as surprise by Jezebel’s lack of repentance as I was. I think this is the spirit of Jezebel, the spirit of Jezebel is…

Keith: Oh my goodness.

Nehemia: Can I speak? The spirit of Jezebel is you encounter truth, you see the evidence, and you say, “I’m going to stick with what I already knew.” Even though you see the evidence right in front of you. That’s the spirit of Jezebel.

Keith: No, Elijah saw that she’s a nut, and he had finished his mission.

Nehemia: What do you mean?

Keith: It was time to get out of there. Elijah didn’t say, “Well, now she’s going to repent.”

Nehemia: Wait a minute. So we just read in verse 46, which you kind of skipped over, that Elijah went all the way to Jezreel, to the capital, meaning he could have run from Mount Carmel, but he followed Ahab all the way back home to where he was going to tell Jezebel, because maybe he was expecting her to repent. Maybe he thought, “You know what? She probably won’t repent because Jezebel has the spirit of Jezebel, but I’m going to give her that chance.” It’s almost like when the angels went down to Sodom - come on, they knew the Sodomites were going to be Sodomites, but they gave them the opportunity to repent. And here she had the opportunity to repent, and he saw that she didn’t repent. Then he said, “Okay, now it’s time to hightail it out of here.” [laughing]

Keith: We are clearly... Okay. All right, well listen...

Nehemia: I’m reading what it says!

Keith: So when I hear this, I’m thinking of the wisdom of Elijah that says it’s time to get out of here, “and he came to Beer Sheva in Judah. He left his servant there.” So a servant was with him this whole time. We don’t hear about the servant.

Nehemia: So Elisha shows up later in the story, so it can’t be Elisha.

Keith: It can’t be him. It’s got to be someone else.

Nehemia: Some anonymous servant.

Keith: Some anonymous servant that was there with him. “And while he himself went a day’s journey into the desert, he came into a broom tree.” What’s a broom tree, Nehemia?

Nehemia: Yeah. I don’t know. Some kind of little tree. It’s a ‘rotem’, whatever that is.

Keith: Okay. So there’s this broom tree, and he sees this tree and he sat down under it and he prayed that he might die. Wow. That he might die? So we just had this great victory, and now he’s saying...

Nehemia: Can I read to you what it literally says?

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: Literally it says, “Veyishal et nafsho lamut,” “and he asked his soul to die.”

Keith: “And he asked his soul to die.”

Nehemia: Really, when we see in Hebrew, “it’s his soul”, it also means himself. He asked himself to die. That’s profound.

Keith: That is profound.

Nehemia: That’s really profound. Can we have some confession time here, or should we move on?

Keith: Well, let’s, I want to have confession. I just want to say what he said after that, and then let’s have confessions. He says, “I’ve had enough.”

Nehemia: “Enough, now Yehovah take my soul “Ki lo tov Anochi me’avotai’ “for I’m no better than my father.”

Keith: Now see, that’s the shift that I want to talk about.

Nehemia: Oh, you want to focus on that? I want to talk about this. We’ve got this conception in the Western world - I think I would venture to say the Judeo-Christian world overall - that suicide is, if you’ve ever even had those thoughts, you’re this bad person, and you’d be surprised how many people have had those thoughts. Look, I’ve struggled with this question myself. I’ve been in a really deep place of depression and prayed this prayer for God to take my life. I’ve actually had…

Keith: Folks… wait a minute. No, no, wait, Nehemia. Now, hold on here. Let’s back up for a second. Maybe we can smooth this out a little bit.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: You want to jump right into this, so we couldn’t smooth it out and maybe say that he had an image of dying, and that we could argue that because he went to sleep, he really just meant , “I want to go to sleep,” and it was the thought that maybe he just needed some time to sleep? You’re saying that you think Elijah...

Nehemia: He’s depressed, he wants to die.

Keith: You think this is it. He really… that’s it.

Nehemia: At this moment. Yes.

Keith: You’re saying you’ve been at a time in your life where you’ve actually thought that way.

Nehemia: I’ve been in a worse situation than he is right now, and it was only through Yehovah that I was plucked out of the fire… we read that phrase, “a brand plucked from the fire,” that was me. I won’t go into all the details right now, but I was in a situation where I was closer to Elijah to death, and Yehovah saved me at that moment.

And I’ve talked about how salvation has a literal physical and a spiritual component to it. It was through experiencing that I could see the spiritual component of it. That’s not something I read about just in the Tanakh. It was having to experiencing it myself. Yehovah coming at the last moment and plucking me out of the fire, of literally saving my life at the last moment, in a time of desperation, that I realized God is just unbelievable. He’s amazing. He’s just… I’ll talk to people where they’re not sure if God is real, but after experiencing that, He’s real. I’ve experienced Him. Do we need to edit this whole thing out?

Keith: Rav ata. Enough now, basically in your time you’ve had time in your life where you just said, “Okay, now that’s it.” And the thing that I’m struggling with, maybe they’re just reading the story and back to the translators, they’re reading the whole story and they’re saying maybe it’s because of fear. I actually think of this as he’s done this amazing thing. Like, what does it take to stand in front of 850 prophets and to see all these things and to see the amazing hand of God and the fire fall down and to do all of that, and then after it’s all said and done, Jezebel says and sends the message to him, “By tomorrow, you’re dead.”

Now think about it. Why not just say, “Okay, well, tomorrow if I’m dead, I’m dead”? But instead, he says, “No, I’m not going to let her get the glory and for me to be dead. I’m just going to die.”

Nehemia: So I can understand his depression. He’s… I don’t know what the word is. He’s saying, “It doesn’t matter what I do, there’s nothing I can do to make this situation better. There’s just no point anymore.” This is desperation that he’s experiencing. I mean, God sent the fire down from heaven and showed that my God was real and their God was fake and the queen of the false god is still trying to kill me? Like, what’s the point of all this? I understand his vexation, that’s my point.

Keith: Well then he lay down and he went under the sleep of anxiety, or the sleep of stress, and he finally went to sleep. So he went to sleep. But then all at once, it says in the NIV, “Behold, an angel touched him and said, ‘Get up and eat.’ And he looked around and there by his head was a cake of bread, baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. And he ate and he drank and he went to sleep again.”

In other words, that wasn’t like get up, eat, and I’ve got energy to keep going. “The angel of Yehovah came back a second time and touched him and said, ‘Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.’ So he got up and he ate and he drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled 40 days.” Are you kidding me? “40 days and 40 nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and he spent the night.”

Now, this is where I want to have a conversation. Where’s he going, and why? Where is he going…?

Nehemia: He’s going to Mount Sinai, which is also called Horeb. Why is he going there? That’s where God appeared before Israel and spoke to the entire nation of Israel.

Keith: So do you think this is a crisis of faith, or is this a crisis of circumstance? What is it? In other words…

Nehemia: I don’t think it’s a crisis of faith, meaning, his faith isn’t the issue right now. Let’s see what he says to God when he’s up there. I mean… So let’s read on a couple more verses.

Keith: Before we do that, I want to do a little transition here. Because what I think is really interesting… The first time that you actually went to the traditional Mount Sinai... Let’s let the people know about the traditional Mount Sinai, we call it Mount Sinai. There’s the traditional Mount Sinai and there’s what we believe to be, and wherever that is exactly, the biblical Mount Sinai. But up until some time ago, you could go and visit the traditional Mount Sinai, which by itself is a phenomenal experience. The first time you told me about it… and I do this a lot - if you tell me about something that’s really amazing and it touches my heart, I say I’ve got to do it.

Nehemia: I went to China and now you’re spending a year in China! [laughing]

Keith: Yes, I wish I was in your China situation. I’m in a completely different situation. But anyway, the point is that when I heard about that, and the beauty of it and also the significance of it, and you told me the story about what it’s like to be up there at night and all of that, but to physically, to actually go there, it didn’t matter to me - I just want to say this - it didn’t matter to me that it was the traditional Mount Sinai. It became the experience itself. And you remember what we did? We ended up spending time, and it was freezing cold and we were in a, what do they call that? Like a Bedouin...

Nehemia: We were in a cave. Yes, well, it was like this half cave stone structure built into the side of a hill, like kind of cave thing.

Keith: Oh my gosh. I don’t know if I’ve been so cold at night in my life.

Nehemia: It was pretty cold. Our mistake was to go in February. See, I had been myself to Mount Sinai, I went there with a friend when I was going through a crisis of my own. I was in this situation where I was in a great - actually not the situation I just spoke about, believe it or not - but I was in a situation where I was in great pain after having a situation in my life, and I wanted God to take that pain away, and I ended up going to Mount Sinai, the traditional Mount Sinai, the real one’s in Saudi Arabia, I’d get my head cut off, unfortunately, if I went there. But I went to the one in Egypt, which actually, as we’re recording this, is probably just as dangerous, if not more dangerous than going to the one in Saudi Arabia.

Keith: We went there just before things got… things were bad.

Nehemia: Now the things are crazy. I mean, they’re cutting people’s heads off… Anyway, ISIS is there and Al-Qaeda. Anyway, I went to the traditional Mount Sinai a number of years back, and I was up there at the top of the mountain, and I was praying to God, and just all of a sudden I had this experience and I was overcome by this these waves of emotion. I felt God reached down and take my pain away. I actually talk about this I think in Open Door Series, we talk about this, I talk about it, and in the book Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. But it was really a turning point for me.

Up until then I’d had a number of spiritual experiences in my life, but I was always taught that’s something that we don’t deal with. That’s something that people who don’t know any better because they can’t read the books deal with. That was kind of the upbringing I came with. Once I had that experience, it then opened the door for me to go back and look at some of those experiences and say, “Wait a minute, I don’t need to be ashamed that I had these other spiritual experiences, because this is real. This has nothing to do with superstition or a lack of book learning. God is doing things in my life, and I just need to acknowledge that.” So that was really an important turning point in my life.

Keith: It’s something - we got there at night, the idea is you get there at night and then you go up to the mountain. And it’s funny, Nehemia, back then I tell this story that you were not doing well. You had your neck hurt and your back was hurt, and yet you had this huge backpack with you. You always carry this backpack everywhere you go. I never know what are all these things in this backpack.

So you’re like, “Look, we’re going to go top of the mountain. I’ll take care of it.” And then I’m smart enough. I see camels. And I said, “Let’s take the camels to the top.” I had never heard you scream as loud as we got up on those camels. But it was really cool, because the camels were yoked together and they were going up the mountain, and it was one of the few times where you had to follow me. My camel was going up at night, in the dark, and it was like this amazing and powerful experience.

Again, when I think about Elijah, I think whatever, however big that mountain is, Mount Horeb, how big it is and what the physical exertion that he used. It says, the angel tells him, “You don’t have enough energy for this journey, eat and drink.” And then he goes 40 days and 40 nights. I mean, I just wonder, if a psychologist could look at this or a person could look at it and looks at the physical aspects of what he’s spending in energy, the emotional issues that he’s gone through. He’s just had this, you call it, you use the word like a suicide, kind of like take my life sort of thing. I’m trying to smooth that over a little.

Nehemia: Can I say? But in the Hebrew he doesn’t say “take my life.” He says to himself he wants to die. It’s one thing, like with Job; Job had the experience where he said, “God, take my life, it’s better that I wouldn’t have been born,” et cetera. That’s actually what a major part of the Book of Job was about.

But in the Hebrew, and I see they’ve kind of sugarcoated this in the English, in the Hebrew he says to himself, “I’m ready. I want to die.” And look, I’ll confess that I’ve been in that situation a number of times in my life, and I’ve gotten too close for comfort, let’s put it that way. And Yehovah’s the one who saved me from that happening, and I’m so grateful for that. I fully acknowledge that it was Him, and I experienced Him through that. I’ll talk about that one day when I’m ready to, I’m not really ready to.

Can I do something really radical, which we didn’t prepare and you’re not gonna like it?

Keith: I’m not going to like it. Go ahead.

Nehemia: It’s okay. I want to read people a little passage from the book that I wrote about my experience. Can I do that?

Keith: Oh, that’s fine. Sure.

Nehemia: So this is… I actually have the file right here opened up.

Keith: So you wrote the book, we’re on the radio, why can’t you just tell us what it is? You want to read word for word?

Nehemia: I want to read a passage. I rarely do this, I don’t do book readings, but here I want to read it, because this was something that I had recorded shortly after it happened. Sometimes you look back years later and you’re like, so many things happen, it becomes blurry. So here, all right…

Keith: Before you start reading, tell them about the book, what book you’re talking about.

Nehemia: It’s a book called Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence, and I opened with this experience on Mount Sinai. And I’m not going to read the whole thing, I’ll just read a little excerpt here.

Keith: We’re not going to read the whole book? [laughing]

Nehemia: No, no. But it’s actually, it’s pretty cool. I’m looking at it right now. It’s about me and a guy, a friend of mine named Adam. We were up there on Mount Sinai, and we’re in that little-cave like shelter, the one that you were in with me years later, but we were there in August, or maybe September, and it wasn’t as cold.

So I wrote here, “My friend and I sat on a mat on the floor of the candlelit shelter and I pulled my Bible out of my backpack. I flipped to the Book of Kings,” this exact passage, “and began to read the story of Elijah’s journey to Mount Sinai in Hebrew, translating it to English for my friend as I read. Elijah walked for 40 days and 40 nights before reaching Mount Sinai. When he arrived at the top of the mountain, he laid down in a small cave and prayed for guidance. As he lay there, he heard ‘a great strong wind splitting mountains and shattering rocks, but God was not in the wind. Then there was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. Then a fire, but God was not in the fire. Finally, Elijah heard a still small voice, and God spoke to him through this voice.’”

“As I was reading this and translating to English, I became fascinated with the phrase ‘a still small voice’. In Hebrew, it actually said ‘kol d’mama dakah’. Literally ‘a thin, silent voice’. How could a voice be silent and what did it really mean that the voice was thin? We spent some time discussing Elijah’s experience on Mount Sinai, and then decided that rather than waiting in the shelter, we would head for the peak.”

“It took less than 10 minutes to reach the top of the mountain. There were hundreds of people up there from every race and dozens of nationalities. I heard many languages I recognized, but more that I did not. Many of the pilgrims at the peak were shaking violently from the chilly wind,” even then it was cold, “they assumed it would be as hot on the peak as it was at the foot of the mountain, and some wore nothing more than shorts and t-shirts. Thankfully, the Bedouin came to the rescue, renting out woolen blankets to the freezing visitors. We were warned to bring warm clothes, so I was comfortably wrapped in several layers of shirts, topped off with a hoodie.”

“Most of the people at the peak were concentrated around two buildings - an old church and an old mosque. I needed to get away from the wall of noise that people created, so I walked down a flight of old stone steps that led to a ruined building below the church. I sat down behind an old column, pulled my hood over my head and began to pray. I don’t think I’ve ever prayed so hard in my life. I came to the mountain because my heart ached, and even after two months, the pain had not diminished. I sat behind that pillar and had a conversation with God asking Him to take away the hurt.”

“I must have been down there for an hour when people started spilling down the steps into the ruined building where I was praying. As more and more pilgrims arrived, they were running out of room at the top. I decided to get up and look for my friend. I pushed through the throng of people bounding up the steps towards the highest part of the peak. At a certain point, I could not go any further. I decided to lay claim to a small patch of ground about midway between the church and the mosque.” Hey, isn’t that symbolic?

“My plan was to wait there until sunrise, which by now was less than an hour away. I stood there staring at the horizon as the pre-dawn light turned the sky deep blue. There was a group of Africans I assumed to be Kenyans behind me. Every now and then they would break out into the most beautiful acapella singing. I had no idea what they were singing about, but I imagined it was some sort of religious music.”

“I decided to pull my hood over my head and to go back to praying. I didn’t want to nag God, but the pain in my heart hadn’t subsided. As I prayed and the Kenyans sang, I suddenly recognized one word in their music. It was a Hebrew word, or rather two Hebrew words, which are often are joined together in the Bible as ‘hallelujah’. Praise Yah. They were praising God using the poetic form of His name that appears dozens of times in the Hebrew Bible. I couldn’t believe it. I was on a mountain top in the middle of the desert, and these people I didn’t know, speaking a language I couldn’t understand, were praising the name of the one true God in perfect Hebrew. I had no idea what the rest of the song was about, but they kept coming back to ‘hallelujah’ in the chorus.”

“By this time, the first rays of the sun start to shine forth over the horizon, turning the mountains that surround Mount Sinai a beautiful reddish brown. As the Kenyans praise the name of Yah one more time, something happened to me, something I never experienced before. A wave of emotion suddenly overcame me, and out of nowhere, I burst into tears. I don’t know if it lasted 10 minutes or 10 seconds. Time seemed to stand still. I suddenly felt God’s love in a way I’ve never felt it before, not just in some intellectual way of knowing that God loves me, but in a very real and tangible way. In my mind’s eye I could see God looking down from heaven at me and hear Him say, ‘I’m going to take the pain off your shoulders and carry it for you.’ I then felt the hand of Yah reach down and take my pain away.”

“From that moment, the numbing pain was gone. I’m not saying it didn’t still hurt, but the feelings of emptiness and despair were gone. For two months I’d been looking out at the world through a veil of sadness, overwhelmed by hopelessness. Then I heard the thin silent voice and that all evaporated in an instant. I didn’t have a spotless mind like Jim Carrey in that movie, but I felt like a human being again, invigorated by the morning chill.”

All right. I could read on and on, but it really was an unbelievable… Like, even those words don’t do it justice describing what happened, and there’s no way I can read this story now, reading what Elijah experienced, and not go back to that. And that may not have been the exact spot where Elijah was, cause the real Mount Sinai might be in Saudi Arabia, but that was as close as I could get. And I believe Yehovah decided, “Okay, this is as close as you can get to Me. I’m gonna meet you there.” Isn’t God amazing? That He’ll come and meet us even if we can’t get to exactly where He is, or exactly where He taught us to be, that He’ll come and meet us and deal with us. Hallelujah.

Keith: You said a phrase in there, you said, “the empty spot in that movie”. What movie are you talking about?

Nehemia: So there was this movie that I absolutely love with Jim Carrey, where he’s in love with this woman, and he can’t…

Keith: Do you talk about the movie earlier?

Nehemia: I do. Yes.

Keith: Oh!

Nehemia: He can’t get over the pain, and so he goes through this operation to have a spotless mind. That’s what I wanted - to have a spotless mind and have just have those memories erased, and I couldn’t have that, that’s not how real life works.

Keith: That’s not how it works.

Nehemia: And even today I remember, and there’s still some pain looking back, but it’s not the same kind of pain as before, where it was like all-encompassing. Isn’t God amazing? That He could take my pain away? Like, if somebody else had told me that story before it happened to me, I would’ve said, “Yeah, right.” I would’ve said, “Aha. [laughing] Alas!”, and I would have rolled my eyes. But after I experienced that, it’s like, “Wow, God is bigger than the boxes that my people have put Him in.”

Keith: You know what’s funny about rolling eyes? I have to tell you, I’m sitting here in Jerusalem and there’ve been so many things that have come up. So many issues that we’ve talked about, and we’ve been here about a week and we’ve done all these sessions and all that. I think about you writing that now, and who you were then, and the rolling of eyes from 12 years ago, there’s not so much rolling of eyes by you anymore.

Nehemia: Well, I’ll be honest with you, there was a time when somebody would share - even you - you told me about how you got this thing, and I’d be like, “Another crazy Christian who’s come to Jerusalem.” And what I’ve seen is God is bigger than the boxes that we’ve created for Him. And I really mean that. In my tradition, we’ve created these boxes for Him. God doesn’t do that. He doesn’t deal with those people in that way. “Oh no, he only did that 3,000 years ago. He doesn’t do that anymore.” Really? Who says? You know, God can do whatever He wants and He can do it with whoever He wants and He can do it anyway He wants. Having experienced these things myself, now when somebody tells me something that theologically doesn’t make sense to me, intellectually, doesn’t make sense to me, I say, “You know what? That person had that experience with God, they believe they had experience with God. I don’t need to question that. That was the experience that they had for them, and who am I to question that?

Keith: Wow. And so what you were reading, you were talking about the phrase, it actually quoted it word for word.

Nehemia: ‘Kol d’mama daka’, thin silent voice. I have nothing more to say on that.

Keith: Yes, I mean, and then, but then there’s this, and I want to just talk about this a little bit because he has this experience and then a voice says to him, I think this is really interesting. “When there’s a question that’s asked of man or a woman by God,” this is verse 14. I’m sorry, verse 13, “When there’s a question that’s asked by God of man or woman, the question isn’t asked because God doesn’t know the answer. When the question is asked, it’s almost like God’s saying, ‘Now answer it for Me so that you can know why you’re there.’”

So it’s like asking in Genesis, “Adam, where are you? It’s not that I don’t know where you are. I know exactly where you are, but I need you to be able to tell Me where you are.” And in this situation He says, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And then Elijah goes on to explain why he’s there.

Nehemia: Now, can I ask something? So you’re a father, and I’ve never been a father yet. Yehovah maybe perhaps one day will bless me. But I’ve been the daddy of a dog, and when the dog would do something, I would say, “Georgia, did you do something?” And she knew. I knew. And she knew that I knew.

Keith: Oh, she could understand your language.

Nehemia: She knew exactly, just from the tone, if she like maybe she had an accident in the house or… I’d say, “Did you do…” or she stole my dinner and jumped up on the thing, and I’d say, “Did you do something?” And then she would have the… Now is that the same thing with children?

Keith: Yeah. It’s really interesting. No, because many times I would go to my sons and say… it’s almost like one of them saying, “Give God the glory. Tell me the truth.” I already know. I already know what happened.

Nehemia: But it wasn’t as a question.

Keith: No, no, it was like a statement. [laughing] But there are times when you ask a question and you want them to be able to say, “Yes, this is exactly…” I’m really glad you brought that up, Nehemia, because it’s a great memory for me as I go back to that. But when I think of these questions that God asked all through Scripture, the question is asked and then the answer comes, and it’s almost like you get to answer, and Elijah is answering here so he can know himself. It isn’t that God’s going to get some new information. It’s that Elijah is going to be able to say it, and then we, as the readers, get to understand all of this that’s happened up to this point. All this running, this what you call him saying he’s going to take his life, or he asked to take his life.

Nehemia: He thought about it.

Keith: Yeah. Getting that right. But in all of it, he’s now going to tell us, and I want to know if I can read the reason for this. He says, and I think it’s really interesting what he says, because it’s almost like he’s got a bad memory. I’ll tell you what I mean. “The Israelites have rejected Your covenant.” That’s true. “Broken down Your altars.” That’s true. “Put Your prophets to death.” That’s true. “With the sword.” That’s also true.”

Then he makes this statement, and then I want us to stop here. Now, did he not remember that he had been told by Obadiyahu. It says here, then he says, “and I am the only one left and now they’re trying to kill me too.” So they are, and I’m the only one left. What’s going on here with this last statement? Is this like his just… I mean, it’s just that bad?

Nehemia: Well, he thinks he’s the only prophet left.

Keith: Yeah, but there were prophets that were hidden in the cave, and he has been told about the...

Nehemia: Yeah there were 100. 50 in each cave.

Keith: Yes. So there are a hundred. Am I being too tough on him? You’re probably saying, “Look, you know what? Let Elijah, you know…”

Nehemia: Well, the answer is “no, you’re not the only one.” That’s the answer.

Keith: Exactly.

Nehemia: But why he said that I don’t know. I don’t have the answer for that. Maybe somebody can figure it out and post it on BFAInternational.com.

Keith: I would love them to post that, and tell me why Elijah says…

Nehemia: Nehemiaswall.com.

Keith: Because it’s really interesting, the little transition that takes place, and I’m looking at the big picture right now. You were reading your book, and I thought it was really beautiful because it’s a chance for you to bring to yesterdays, the todays and tomorrows as far as your own experience and testifying to that.

But as we’re looking at the big picture, this is something that kind of stopped me in my tracks, because I’m saying… now this is gonna sound really bad and you’re probably gonna think I’m being insensitive. But is Elijah in that situation now where it’s like it’s moved beyond, this is the circumstance? It’s like a pity party. It’s even further.

Nehemia: Here’s what I could say. I’m going out maybe on a limb here, but perhaps… let me just say this. Someone who’s in a desperate state of depression, and I’m speaking from experience, tends to exaggerate how bad things are.

Keith: That’s what I was waiting for.

Nehemia: So for example, in some of the literature on this topic they talk about infant time. What they explain is like for example, when an infant is lying in the crib and starts to cry, and maybe the mother is off getting the bottle and it takes 90 seconds. But to the infant, the infant doesn’t know how long that will be. It doesn’t have a lot of life experience. So to the infant, that 90 seconds is an eternity, and can actually traumatize the child, so they say.

And when you’re dealing with extreme experiences of depression, you might be going through something that lasts two-and-a-half days, but to you that two-and-a-half days is infant time. It’s an eternity. And the objective, as you’re going through this is, and this is the intellectual trying to override the emotional, is to say, “Okay, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” In other words, right now, I think this pain will never go away. ‘Ani shoel et nafshi lamoot’, “I’m asking my soul to die.”

What you’re doing is attempting to have a permanent solution to a problem that’s temporary, that because you’re on infant time, and they talk about white-knuckling it, which is to get through that infant time. If you can get through the infant time, if you can overcome that, and get to the other side, then it’s not so bad. Then you look back 10 years later and say, “Oh yeah, that was a really painful time of my life. I remember that.” But all right, it’s something you remember, but at the time when you’re in that moment, everything is exaggerated in your mind. And so maybe he does think he’s the only one... Yes, intellectually he remembers that there are a hundred guys in a cave somewhere, but right now it feels like “I’m the only one”. This is a hopeless situation, and what God is telling him is, “Get off your tuches. It’s not hopeless.”

Keith: Well actually what I think that happens here in 15, this is one of those times when I kind of, I’ve got a business background. So before I was ever in ministry, I worked in the corporate world, and there’d be a meeting and the big head honcho would come in, and something would happen in the company or something would happen in the world or in the marketing or whatever, where the head honcho would come in and say, “Okay, everything changes.” And so the head honcho comes in, and it’s like, he hears this and then Yehovah says to him. Now I think this is interesting. I see the Father, He like steps in as the CEO. “Okay, Elijah’s had enough.”

Nehemia: Everything changes.

Keith: Everything changes. “Go return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus,” then he throws a curveball, “and when you arrive, I’ll make Hazael a Mashiach. Anoint Hazael king over Aram.” [laughing]

Nehemia: They’re the enemy.

Keith: Wait a minute. Why do we have to have that phrase there? Why does he have to anoint Hazael king over Aram? And why are we hearing about this? I mean, we’re supposed to slow down and say wait. And then he says, “And Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint king over Israel.” So he’s got three things he tells him, “Okay, Elijah, you’re about to get your pension. Retirement is coming, but before you leave, I need you to do something. First thing, go return on your way back and go and do this work for Aram.” And what I think when I read that honestly, Nehemia, I just think about how big Yehovah is again, I talk about this all the time. There’s nothing that He’s unaware of, and now we get to see actually a situation where I asked the question before - I said, “Why do we hear about these other countries? Why do we hear about these other nations? Why are we hearing about what He did with this nation and that nation?” And sure enough, we get an insider’s look. Here’s an example of an insider’s look. You shall go and anoint Hazael king over Aram. And we could literally spend the rest of the time just talking about what the issues are around that.

Nehemia: Yeah. Now, I want to talk about this phrase in verse 15. Can you read the beginning of verse 15 in your translation?

Keith: “Go return on your way to the wilderness?”

Nehemia: It just says the wilderness? What is this wilderness of Damascus? Isn’t that interesting? ‘midbar Hadamasek’, the wilderness of Damascus. Maybe it’s simply that he’s going to Aram, to Aramea, to the Syrian capital, to Damascus, to anoint Hazael as the king over Aram. And this is homework for people. So, there’s this document called the Damascus Document. It was actually the first Dead Sea Scroll that was discovered. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a cave in 1947 on the shores of the Dead Sea near a place called Qumran. But before that, in the late 1800s, they discovered something called the Damascus Document in the Cairo Geniza. That essentially was part of the literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls, just it was discovered in Egypt, not by the Dead Sea. Later they found copies of it next to the Dead Sea.

So this Damascus Document, or sometimes it’s called the Covenant of Damascus, it’s really a top... we should sometime do a show just on itself. But it talks about this group of people who come together in the land of Damascus, and it’s based on this verse. They took this verse and they kind of spiritualized it or maybe they read into it something. Then in the Damascus Document, 6:19 it mentions, I’m not gonna read the whole thing, but I’ll just mention the phrase here. It says, “According to the commandments of those entering the ‘Brit Chadasha’, the new covenant in the land of Damascus. Very interesting stuff. That’s some homework for people. Go look up the new covenant in the land of Damascus, really fascinating stuff. This was of course, things that were written before somebody came along and wrote a book that today we call the New Testament, the new covenant. This was back then, probably around 200 BC, the Damascus document was written. Really interesting stuff.

Keith: So you’re telling me in verse 15, that’s what you were going to focus on, was the Damascus Document, and not “you shall anoint Hazael king over Aram?”

Nehemia: No, we can talk about that now.

Keith: I did already talk about it. You didn’t say anything about it. So it doesn’t move you?

Nehemia: It moves me. So there are three anointings here that take place, right? Two of them are for a king and one of them is for a prophet, and one is for a foreign king. So as far as I can remember, this is the first time we hear about a foreign king being anointed. Later, we have an anointed of course as Mashiah, he’s anointed with oil, made a Mashiach. So we’ve Hazael, the King of Aram, who’s anointed. We have Yehu, who is anointed as King of Israel, and we have Alisha who is anointed as a prophet.

So there are two firsts here. One is anointing a foreign king and the other is anointing a prophet. We don’t have anywhere else in the Tanakh that I can remember where a prophet is… after this we do, in Isaiah, but the first time we hear about a Prophet being anointed with oil, we have a high priest anointed with oil. We have a King of Israel anointed with oil, this is the first time a foreign king and a prophet are anointed with oil.

Keith: The folks that are listening, I want you to interact with me on this. Go to BFA international.com, and then after you come up with these great statements, go over to Nehemiaswall.com and put them there, because I think this is really significant. To me, it’s more an image of, like I say, Yehovah the CEO that steps in and says, “Now, you guys don’t know the big picture. Here’s the deal. Elijah, I need you to do these three things. Don’t ask any questions. Go do this. Go do this, do this.”

And then it says, “After you’ve done that,” he explains what’s going to happen. “It shall come about that the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall put to death. And the one who escapes the sword of Jehu, Elishah shall put to death.” Now he’s had been anointed as a prophet, but he’s going to be taking off some heads.

Nehemia: You mean Elisha.

Keith: Elisha, Yes.

Nehemia: Well look, when he calls him, we read the section where he calls him the troubler of Israel. Maybe there’s something to that. [laughing]

Keith: [laughing] Then he says, and again 18 says, “‘I will leave 7,000,’ he says…

Nehemia: “And I will leave.”

Keith: ‘I will leave 7,000 in Israel. All the knees that have not done two things - bow to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.’”

Nehemia: So think about that. That’s interesting. I don’t know. You knew that from other passages. They would kneel before Baal and they would come up to his statue and kiss the lord, kiss the statue of Baal the lord.

Keith: So I’ve had this issue. I did a series called Now Is The Time, and some people think I went too far. I don’t think I did at all. But I was really having a struggle with Pope Benedict. We’d been in a long-term fight because of his…

Nehemia: Pope Benedict?

Keith: Yes, Pope Benedict.

Nehemia: Is he even the Pope anymore?

Keith: No, he’s not…well actually he is, he’s the pope behind the curtain. But anyway, I got in a lot of trouble with the Now Is The Time series. I invite you to look at it at BFAinternational.com. But one of the things that happens is when he went to New York, he actually decided to meet not only with the Jewish community, and this was really quite hard for me to see, he met with the Jewish community, his first time where the Pope came on American soil and went into a synagogue. And the second thing that he did is he went and met with the Protestants. And in both cases, people would kiss his ring.

Nehemia: You’re telling me a rabbi kissed his ring?

Keith: I have it on video! People in the synagogue would reach out and grab it.

Nehemia: Seriously? I don’t believe that. These were Catholics in the synagogue, right?

Keith: Then the Protestants are waiting in line, including the bishops and the Methodists and the Evangelicals. Yes, the Evangelicals and the Reforms and the Lutherans, and they wait in line and they go up to the Pope and bow and kiss his ring. And I just have to be honest with you… [laughing] You know, Nehemia, one of the reasons…

Nehemia: So are you saying the pope is Baal? Is he the Lord?

Keith: No I’m not, no I didn’t say that. I think it’s worse than that, because in my opinion, what would ever give anyone the authority, if it’s not Yehovah Himself, where you would bow down and kiss…?

Nehemia: Can I read you this?

Keith: Yes, please.

Nehemia: So there’s this thing, the holiest site for Muslims is a place called the Kaaba, which is a giant black temple. In the corner of the Kaaba is a special stone that apparently, according to many historians, they say it fell from heaven. So people look at that and they say, “Oh, the black stone fell from heaven. We know what that is. It’s a meteorite.” And every Muslim has the duty to come to Mecca and kiss that stone, and the Muslim pilgrims, they will do this. They’ll walk around the Kaaba, and their goal, if they can, if they’re worthy in their eyes, is to be able to actually kiss the stone. Some of them actually can’t get that close so they can’t kiss it. So they point in the direction as kind of like a long distance kiss, but they want to kiss that stone the way that according to the Islamic tradition, Mohammed kissed this black stone that fell from the sky.

Keith: Okay, well, whatever this is, it’s going on here, these people are kissing Baal. Now I will tell you this, the last three verses, I’m not going to say too much about them. The reason is because I feel like we already talked about these actual verses. We were talking about Elisha being selected, and I must admit, Nehemia, maybe it’s because I’m a little, we’ve been doing this and we’re working and I love talking about the Word of God, but it’s like I still ask the question, “So why didn’t it end at the end of 19?”

It goes on and explains in 18 another section now talking about him finding Elisha, the son of Shafat, “while he was plowing with 12 pairs.” I’m reading it anyway, look at me. “Elijah passed over him and threw his mantle on him. He left the oxen and ran after Elijah and said, ‘Please let me kiss my father and my mother that I will follow you in.’” [laughing] And this is one of the funniest phrases in the Bible to me. Maybe you can give it to us in Hebrew, but in English he says to him, “Go back again, what have I done to you?” [laughing] So like Elijah comes to him and he’s telling him, “Look, here’s my mantle, here’s the deal.” And he says, “Can I go say goodbye to my…?” “What have I done to you?” “Well, you just about changed my life, what are you talking about what have you done to me?”

So what is this response? Maybe there’s some hidden meaning or something, it just makes me laugh.

Nehemia: Well, and then he doesn’t go and kiss his parents. He offers a sacrifice.

Keith: “So he returned from following him and took a pair of oxen, sacrificed them, boiled them, flesh and the implements of oxen, gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he arose and followed Elijah and he ministered to him.” There must be some other word. No, that is sure enough.

Nehemia: So he had a ministry.

Keith: He had a ministry. Amen. So the Ministry Minute, everybody, I will say something. When we went to...

Nehemia: So are you Elisha or Elijah?

Keith: I’m neither, I’m neither the prophet nor the son of a prophet. I’m just a guy who loves the Word of God and giving people a chance to learn it. But one of the things that happened to me that’s referred back to the story, to the mountain, was I had prayed this prayer. I said, “Father, teach me to love what You love and hate what You hate.” That was in 2001, and then when we went to that mountain, Nehemia, I think that was closer to 2010 or 11. I can’t remember.

Nehemia: I don’t know. But I went back to the mountain, that’s also in the book.

Keith: No, no, that’s okay. That’s all right. Everybody get the book. But the second time I went back, I really did hear three words. I really did, I really felt these three words, and the three words were, “you have learned”. And what I mean by learning is learning to love what He loves and hate what He hates. I don’t say that as a sort of a trophy, but I say it in humility that a part of the ministry, the reason that BFA International is so exciting to me right now, is that I want people to learn to love what He loves and hate what He hates, but you can’t learn what He loves and you can’t learn what He hates unless you know what it is. And you can’t know what it is unless you crack open the place that He shares His will, His word and His way.

So everything that we’re doing right now is about you building a strong biblical foundation for your faith. So BFA international.com, please do me a favor, go and see what we’re doing. There’s a Biblical Hebrew audio course on there right now. I just mentioned the Now Is the Time series that’s in the Premium Content Library. Amazing. Probably the most controversial and radical series that we ever done. Really, really, really well received. But, it really gives people a chance to have to slow down…

Nehemia: What’s it called?

Keith: It’s called Now Is the Time. Yeah. And so my point is there’s so much there. One of the reasons I want to end in saying this, one of the reasons that I’m so committed to people learning to have this biblical foundation of faith is because there’s so much other information that’s out there. We keep hearing teachers, whether it’s teachers coming in with a new teaching or a new thought or a new whatever, and I keep feeling really bad, because people end up running behind these people. But then a simple little ability to know what is being said, language, history, and context, can give you an ability on whether it’s… if I can say if it’s kosher, if it’s biblical. And I think that people aren’t always getting a chance to do that.

So that’s really what we’re about, is giving people access to that information and where they can build a biblical foundation for their faith. BFAinternational.com. And I want to make a confession, folks. If my voice sounds bad, which I know that it does, I’m really struggling with a little bit of a battle here within my chest and congestion, but every time we turn on the radio, it just doesn’t matter to me what it sounds like, because of what we’re doing. But I will say, I apologize if you hear me coughing and running away…

Nehemia: We’ll try to edit those out. [laughing]

Keith: [laughing] We’ll try to edit those out.

Nehemia: Good luck.

Keith: It’s like someone said they were listening to us and they said, “We keep hearing sirens in the background.” [laughing]

Nehemia: They’re looking for Keith. It’s door-to-door. [laughing]

Keith: No, it’s not. Go ahead.

Nehemia: No. And actually, we are located here right off of a major road where the ambulances go back and forth.

Keith: It’s not just the roads. It’s the police, Netanyahu’s house is less than half a mile away.

Nehemia: That’s true as well. It’s a lot closer than that. Anyway, so Makor Hebrew Foundation is my ministry, and Nehemiaswall.com head over there. Please, we want you to get involved. Go and listen to, we’ve got the Original Torah Pearls, we’ve got the Prophet Pearls, I’ve got my radio blog that’s going on, my radio podcast. Have a bunch of other things going on - studies and teachings. We’ve got what’s called the Support Team, where there are some really high-quality teachings that are going out there and doing some really intense research, or just sharing that with people who have been supporting the ministry. So go and sign up for that.

And don’t forget to sign up for my free newsletter, and you’ll get an update every week or whenever I feel led. Yes, get involved. Can I just say something? Keith really casually glossed past. Yes, we were on Mount Sinai and I heard these three words. And I’ve got to say, I’ve been traveling with Keith and interacting with him for, what is it now, 13 years now, or something like that

Keith: 13 years. Are you kidding me?

Nehemia: And I’m pretty confident that in the entire time I’ve been with you, I’ve only seen you moved to tears twice. Once was something that happened recently, that if you want to share you can, and the other was up there on Mount Sinai after you had that experience where you say you heard the three words, so it wasn’t just, “Oh, I heard three words, moved on.” He was quite moved by that and I was as well because I had my own experience up there, and I talk about that in my book Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence.

But God is just messing with my life. [laughing] I mean He’s doing these things. And I’ve got to say, when I went up that second time to Mount Sinai with you, I was convinced and resolute that, “Look, God, You caught me off guard last time. I wasn’t paying attention. This is not going to happen again that You’re going to do this thing to me.” And He had different plans. God is bigger than the boxes we’ve created for Him, and He does what He wants to do. And I’m so grateful for Him that He’s done what He’s done in my life. He’s given me this second chance that I’m gonna use every minute and every day of it, the best I can to serve Him.

Keith: Amen. And with that, I want to pray for others that would be in a place where they would also want to hear from Him. So Father, we just thank You so much for Your word and for being here. The testimony of the past, the way that You were there and where we are today. You are here and where we will be and only You know where that is, but You’ll be with us. For those that are listening, as they open these passages and they read them, we pray that they would really allow this story and any aspects of it, the human side of it, the spiritual side of it, to minister to them.

Thank you so much for Your will, Your word, and Your way, and the opportunity for us to open the Word of God. We just pray that people would be encouraged, as they hear these messages and stories of the Prophets, that they’re still good. What they taught in the past is applicable for us today, and we look forward to prophecy being fulfilled in the future. In Your holy name, amen.

Nehemia: Amen.

Thank you for listening to Prophet Pearls with Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson. For more information, please visit Nehemiaswall.com and BFA international.com.

Thank you for listening to Prophet Pearls with Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson. For more information, please visit BFAInternational .com.