Fire From Heaven

 

Creator/	Firemaker/
And the LORD God/	And the fire maker/
formed the man from the dust of the ground/	formed a man of dust on the tinder/
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life/	and he blew into the tinder the breath of life/
and the man became a living soul./	and the man became a living fire.

Genesis 2:7

 

2 Kings 1:2-17 

 "If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty."

אש (esh, Strong's #784); meaning ‘fire’, and  איש (iysh, Strong's #376) meaning ‘man’.

I’m still hung up on the notion of ‘consuming fire’. It’s evident that Jesus clearly did not endorse the idea of a vengeful, wrathful God. So when it comes to Elijah calling fire down on hapless messengers from the king, I feel compelled to figure out what the message is. If it isn’t, “Mess with God, or his designated flunkies, and you’ll be sorry,” then what is it?

I found an article about the symbolism of fire in the bible, and I also found plenty of descriptions that used fire as a metaphor for the presence of God, in particular the fire of God burning in our hearts. “On fire for God,” or “On fire with God.”

The quotation above with the translation of God as ‘Firemaker’ from Genesis is particularly arresting. The author talks about how fire was made in primitive cultures by using a bow drill and fireboard, with fine tinder. The tinder is laid on the ground next to the v-shaped cut beside the hole in the fireboard, and as the bow is worked, fine burning dust falls on the tinder. Then the firemaker carefully lifts the tinder with the sparks in it, and breathes on it to create flames.

The most useful connection I made was that God’s fire is one thing to a person who rejects God, and another thing altogether to one who welcomes it.

Hebrews 12:28-29 “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”

So the power of the prophet is simply that in his (or her) presence and on account of his words, a person’s heart and mind are filled with the fire of God. We still use the words “consumed” and “eaten up” to describe feelings. We say, “Consumed with rage,” or “Eaten up with jealousy.” So when the bible says God fell down from above as a consuming fire, why do we insist on interpreting that as divine murder by holy flamethrower? Doesn’t that just emphasize just how bloodthirsty, vengeful, and self-righteous we human beings are prone to be?

Why can’t we envision those fifty soldiers of the king and their commander climbing up the hot, dusty hill, squinting against the sun to see Elijah sitting at the top, and when they got there, finding themselves compelled to address him as “Man of God.” What do you suppose caused them to do that? Was it the clarity of his gaze, the penetrating stillness of his expression? When he answered them, “If…..If! I am a Man of God, then let God fall on you and consume your heart and mind and soul.” Well, who was it that called him a Man of God in the first place? Wasn’t Elijah simply saying, “If you believe what you just said, then take it to heart! Silly man, you can’t just call someone “Man of God” as if it were an empty platitude.” Well, that would have stopped them in their tracks, wouldn’t it? Then, when the fire of God fell on them and utterly consumed them, then everything that was false, fearful, and self-serving in them was burned up in a flash, and killed.

Come on, even Jesus said over and over, “Die, so that you can be born into the realm of God.” Where do you suppose he got that notion?

Don’t you think it might be a kind of fierce blessing, if all of our delusions were shattered, our hearts caught fire, and every last precious opinion of ourselves blazed up and shriveled to ash in the consuming Fire of God?

Don’t you think that if the living fire within you has gone out, and your life has become an empty pantomime, that if God’s fire suddenly falls and reignites your soul, and you once again become a living fire, that maybe it might be called a ‘catastrophe’, but in the proper sense of the word? (In Greek catastrophe means "an overturning; a sudden end.")

Don’t you think it might be the best thing that ever happened to you if everything you thought you knew got turned wrong-side-out and your broken world was re-created in the fire of understanding?