Elijah, Elisha, Other Prophets, Transfiguration, Tongues of Fire
Elijah, Elisha, & other prophets of 2 Kings
From our perspective, the events of Elijah’s life took place ages ago, but for the prophet Elijah, it would only a few weeks ago that he left his student Elisha. Naturally, he would want to find out what happened to him. For him, finding out what happened to his protégé would be brand new information! My hope is that readers might go back to 2 Kings 2, where the fifty prophets kept telling Elisha about his mater’s imminent departure. They come across rather irritating, but we never get to hear what Elijah thought of all the busybody prophets of his day.
Transfiguration
The figure of Elijah comes up several times in both New Testament and non-biblical Jewish traditions. I play on this theme a lot during this book, as you will see. There is a major difference, however, between Elijah and Moses. Elijah never dies, while Moses does. It seemed reasonable to me that if the chariot of fire had to take him somewhere, why not to the time of the Transfiguration. If he is indeed one of the two Witnesses in the Revelations, he had to get his ‘marching orders’ some time, right? We know that he speaks with Yeshua on the mount of Transfiguration, but the New Testament does not tell us what they spoke about. That seems like a really good time for him to learn of his next mission.
If you go to Israel, you will learn that the ‘traditional’ site of the Mount of Transfiguration is at Mt. Tabor, in the Galilee. I do not believe that is where it occurred. I think it occurred up in Caesarea Philippi. In the chapters before Transfiguration in both Matthew chapter 17 and Mark Chapter 8, Yeshua and his disciples are up in Caesarea Philippi. This is the famous event where Peter declares who Yeshua is. In Matthew’s account, it mentions that it is six days later when the Transfiguration occurs. It seems reasonable that they would have stayed in Caesarea Philippi. Also, to my understanding, Caesarea Philippi is outside the traditional boundaries of Israel. I would make sense that Moses would meet Yeshua there outside of Israel. He will be allowed into the Promised Land, but the time was not yet right. At the end of the age, after the General Resurrection, the time will be right.
Tongues of Fire
I could not help but connect the prophesy of Joel 2:28 in Acts 2 where the tongues of fire appear and they begin speaking in other languages. In Fractured, the time setting is in the last days, so it would only be natural for such a thing to occur again as a sign. It is also a way for the two prophets to understand each other and for Logan, when he sees them in dreams and visions, to understand what they are saying!
