Everywhere you turn these days you hear talk of the Spirit of Elijah coming back into the body of Christ. I think it’s a positive dialog about an affirmative promise in the scripture that can be found in Malachi 4:5-6
“See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”
I began to meditate upon Elijah and the miracles that he did. Some of them were quite cool. That bit about calling down fire from heaven was awesome beyond measure. He also raised the boy from the dead. He also multiplied the flower and oil for the widow in Zarephath. And yet the scripture from Malachi makes mention of none of these significant demonstrations of power when speaking of the Spirit of Elijah that will be infused into the end-times church. Instead it talks about……fatherhood?
I believe that, from the perspective of the Lord, the most significant miracle that Elijah ever did was raise up a spiritual son with a double-portion anointing.
Legacy is not a vain pursuit. We should endeavor to empower our spiritual children to embrace the fullness of the revelation and power that we possess at an early enough age so that they can ultimately surpass what we have done and attain new plunder in the kingdom. I believe that the “curse” mentioned in the verse is of the Midianite variety: where would-be spiritual fathers are forced to lie on their death beds and watch an invader take their spiritual harvest from them because they lacked covenant sons to possess the promise.
It seems as if we’ve almost never had two consecutive generations that, as a whole, have advanced beyond the spiritual authority of their fathers. I believe we will soon see, and may already be seeing, a generation that will do just that. I for one am excited about the prospects.
