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July 21, 2008 - The Dead Prophet Society

I received an email from David Roper of Idaho Mountain Ministry.  His thoughts on Elisha were very interesting and worth considering.

 “No word could overcome him, and after his death his body yet prophesied. He did wonders in his life, and at his death his works were marvelous.”

-Ecclesiasticus 48:12-14

It seems that some Israelites were about to bury a dead companion when a band of Moabite raiders appeared on the horizon. The men spied a nearby tomb--Elisha's tomb as it turned out--rolled the stone from the entrance, cast the corpse into the grave and fled.

The moment the dead body touched Elisha's bones, "the dead man sprang to life and stood up on his feet," and, I suppose, fled alongside his friends. (Imagine their surprise!) Perhaps he escaped for, according to an old legend, he lived for many years and fathered a large number of sons and daughters.

What can we make of this strange miracle with which Elisha's ministry draws to a close? How does Elisha's body yet prophesy? “What teaching lies buried in this enterprise?” Dante puns.

Clearly, in its original setting, the story rounds off the author's Baal polemic and makes the argument that a dead prophet of Yahweh has more power than the living prophets of Baal. But then, that's true of all of God's workers: our best work is done "postmortem."

Paul put it this way, "We who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you" (2 Corinthians 4:11,12).

We are always "being given over to death"; we die a little bit  every day. We pray to be relevant in our proclamation of the gospel and our words fall unheeded to the ground. We ask to be useful and we're unnoticed and deemed unnecessary. We long to do a great work and find ourselves in a low and narrow place. We labor with integrity and skillful hands, and difficult people obstruct and frustrate us.

Every painful experience is "death at work" in us, grinding us down, diminishing us until we have no confidence in the flesh, until we learn that our background, education, experience, intelligence, personality, and appearance are of no use. Nothing in us is a source of hope, nothing is worth defending, nothing is special or admirable. So we fall into the ground and die.

"Falling" is letting go, accepting each blow, seeing it for what it is: God "giving us over to death" so that His life may become manifest in our bodies. This is what Paul calls, "carrying about in our bodies the dying of Jesus," i.e., adopting in every situation Jesus' attitude toward death.

Our Lord died every day of his life. His death on the cross was merely the culmination of an entire lifetime of dying. On each occasion--when insulted, slandered, disgraced, or ignored--he humbly submitted to the will of his Father: "Not my will but yours be done."

We're closest to Him in spirit when we too are willing to die--to take up our cross, lay it across our shoulders and follow him in humble, willing submission. This is not martyrdom--struggling to "mortify the flesh" by some rigorous discipline--but simply laying down our lives as we must someday lay down our lives in submission to final death.

But when we lay down our lives, as humbling and painful as that may be, a new life is created and released, a multiplying life, for "as death works in us life works in (others)."

Out of each death a mysterious life begins to appear. It reveals itself in the quiet meekness with which we receive criticism, in the uncomplaining spirit with which we endure a long-term illness, in the love we give to cold indifference, in the patience with which we respond to repeated and unprovoked provocation, in the endurance that we display in the presence of intense and mean-spirited opposition, in the kindness we show to those that have wronged us, our willingness to be at their side when they suffer.

This is the invisible life of Jesus made visible in our mortal bodies, communicating vitality to those around us, calling them to share his life and likeness. Thus, life "works in others."

And then the process begins anew. "We are always being given over to death," Paul concluded. But with each death there is a burst of new life, life working in us and in others. We are "in deaths often," that new life may appear.

And when it's over it may not be over. When we die our final death, we may yet "prophesy" as Elisha did. God may use what he has worked in us for the blessing and encouragement of others for years to come, perhaps until He comes again. As dead trees become fertile soil for new growth, so after our death we may continue to produce new life in others through the words we have spoken, the prayers we have offered, the letters we have written, the counsel we have given, and by the unforgettable fragrance of our lives.

Jesus said, "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds" (John 12:24). This is His guarantee of success, if we will have it.

There’s no way ‘round it: we must fall into the ground and die