Part 2: Saved from God's wrath through Christ.

Years after Elijah prayed and fire fell from heaven, king Ahab had died and his son from Jezebel, Ahaziah was king of Israel, ruling from his palace in SAMARIA. He and the people had gone back to worshipping idols. Ahaziah fell and seriously injured himself (2 Kings 1.) He sent messengers to the idol that he worshipped to ask whether he would recover. But our Lord God told Elijah to go and confront these messengers and ask them:

“‘Is there no God in Israel? Why are you going to Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, to ask whether the king will recover? 4 Now, therefore, this is what the Lord says: You will never leave the bed you are lying on; you will surely die.’”

So Elijah went to deliver the message. When the messengers returned to the king, he asked them, “Why have you returned so soon?” They told him about their meeting with a certain man and what he said. The king demanded a description and deduced that it was Elijah. He sent an army captain with fifty soldiers to arrest him. See their fate in 2 Kings 1-

9”.....They found him sitting on top of a hill. The captain said to him, “Man of God, the king has commanded you to come down with us.” 10 But Elijah replied to the captain, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and destroy you and your fifty men!” Then fire fell from heaven and killed them all.”

The king sent another captain with fifty men and the same thing happened. He sent another set a third time but this captain had some sense and begged for his life and the lives of his men to be spared. To cut the story short, king Ahaziah died as Elijah prophesied by the word of the Lord.

Fast forward to when our Saviour Jesus Christ walked the earth as Man. Luke 9 gives an account of an incident that happened during this time in the same SAMARIA where Elijah called down fire from heaven and it destroyed those who rejected the Lord:

51 “Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, 52 and sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him. 53 But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. 54 And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?”

The Samaritans rejected Jesus, as was the case during the time of Elijah when the inhabitants of Samaria rejected the Lord. James and John knew their Scripture and were angling for a repeat of what happened with those that died because they rejected the Lord in the time of Elijah - they wanted to “command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did.” But look at the response of our Saviour Jesus:

55 “But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. 56 For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” And they went to another village.”

Believers, we are of the same manner of spirit that Christ speaks of: His Spirit. Not one that seeks to see people suffer or die by fire for their misdeeds or their rejection of Christ, but one that desires for the world to be saved through Him as it is written in John 3:17 - "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."

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