The prophet Elijah’s return: what the Elijah anointing represents to families and the political world in these last days
Prophet Elijah was a man of God deeply involved in political activities. He was not a politician, but he admonished and rebuked politicians.
“You’re the troublemaker… You and your family have disobeyed the LORD’s commands by worshiping Baal”. (1Kings 18:18)
Elijah kept confronting King Ahab subsequently through many other prophetic messages. (To see how God used Elijah in the political realm of Israel, read the chapters 17, 18, 19 and 21 of the book of 1 Kings and the chapter 1 of the book of 2 Kings, in the Old Testament.)
After fulfilling incredible prophetic missions in the politics of Israel, Elijah was taken by God (see the chapter 2 of the book of 2 Kings). Yet, he did not experience death. According to the book of the Prophet Malachi, Elijah will return. God says: “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”. (Malachi 4:5-6 NIV)
However, even before Elijah’s return, a partial, unexpected fulfillment has already happened (just as other partial, unexpected fulfillments are possible to happen):
Jesus answered and said to them, “Indeed, Elijah is coming first and will restore all things. But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wished. Likewise the Son of Man is also about to suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them of John the Baptist. (Matthew 17:11-13 NKJV, the italics is mine.)
When Jesus said that Elijah will restore all things, he also meant that Elijah will put everything in order — especially in the political sphere. The Philips New Testament says that Elijah will “begin the world’s reformation”. The political world, in all its corruption, hypocrisy and wickedness, needs order, and God will send Elijah for this purpose.
John the Baptist: the first man to have Elijah’s anointing?
In the life of John the Baptist, Jesus himself recognized and explained that there was a partial fulfillment for that prophecy, that is, in addition to Elijah’s return, John the Baptist was also an Elijah of God to the world. Probably, the ministry of John the Baptist also shows that God can raise men in the Elijah anointing. Receiving the Elijah anointing, John the Baptist did what Elijah did. What did Elijah do? He rebuked rulers according to the powerful Word of God.
Just as Elijah, John the Baptist led his life in a prophetic seclusion “in the wilderness”, as a best way to seek God, as a best way to for him to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and be a powerful tool of God in the society.
Having the Elijah anointing, John the Baptist confronted Herod (other political creature like President Lula of Brazil and former President Clinton) because of a sexual sin in his life:
For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife”. (Mark 6:18 NIV)
Other Bible translations reveal that John made that rebuke frequently to Herod. Not only once, or twice, but whenever he saw Herod, John opened his mouth. He did not lose any opportunity to say that the king had broken God’s legal limits.
Strangely, what John was doing was the partial fulfillment of God’s promise in Malachi. Yet, no one could imagine that included in that promise was also the return of the Elijah anointing. John the Baptist may have been the first servant of the Lord to enjoy that anointing.
The prophetic mission of John the Baptist was to prepare the heart of God’s people for the greatest visitation of the Lord in the human history. Of course, spiritually, the Lord will keep visiting his people, to make great works, and servants of the Lord will help prepare the heart of God’s people for the visitations of the Holy Spirit in these last days. If the Lord keep pouring out the Elijah anointing, we will see men bold in the Holy Spirit, ready, according God’s Word, to rebuke rulers in sin and corruption.
What John the Baptist did frequently before Herod is a startling contrast with the reality of our days, where ordinary men and women who profess to be from God support politicians and rulers having a moral and sexual behavior worst than the behavior of Herod. Yet, the political involvement of John went as far as where those men and women do not dare to go. His political involvement did not flatter the powerful, but did reflect faithfully God’s perspective to deal with specific and serious moral problems.
Where the Elijah anointing goes in, goes in too the prophetic ministry before political authorities, so that their politics get aligned with God’s politics and so that politicians get morally aligned with God’s will and laws.
While Elijah in the Old Testament used to exhort the Jew rulers to lead a righteous lifestyle to please God, in the New Testament John exhorted Herod (who was not a Jew) to correct his sexual behavior. Herod had many serious problems (including dishonesty, corruption and violence) that deserved sharp rebuke. John could have confronted all of theses sins, for he had knowledge, through his parents who were from priestly families, of the important role of the Old Testament prophets in the denunciation against the corruption and oppression against the poor by government offficiais.
However, he acted according to the righteous priority God had put in his heart, perhaps because it did not much sense to press a politician to try to “fix” the things in the society when his life needed a moral “repair”. He did not waste his energy attacking all the sins of a politician. He began attacking head-on the sin his spiritual vision saw as the most critical in that point. His absolute priority was to deal directly with the moral issue, even though he did also condemn other sins in King Herod. For his attitude of rebuking the sexual sin of a man in the government, John eventually suffered prison and death.
Jesus endorsed the prophetic behavior of John. While John was in the prison because of the “crime” of condemning the sexual sin of Herod, Jesus had only kindly comments about him. “I can guarantee this truth: Of all the people ever born, no one is greater than John the Baptizer… If you are willing to accept their message, John is the Elijah who was to come.” (Matthew 11:14 GWV, emphasis is mine.)
If he lived in our days, there is no doubt that John would open his mouth before politicians like President Lula in Brazil, who actively promotes abortion and homosexuality in the society. Yet, who could say that the Elijah anointing cannot be given to men of God in Brazil? While the pouring out of this anointing is not seen, nothing keeps God’s people from crying out ceaselessly: “Lord, Brazil has in its government Herods and Ahabs, but where are your Elijah for Brazil?”
Restoring and reforming the political world
At the same time he declared John symbolized Elijah, Jesus made also clear that Elijah will really come to restore everything and begin the world’s reformation. There are many crooked, perverted and wicked things in the political leaders and in the politics and laws themselves made by them, and Elijah will come with the powerful Word of the Lord to rebuke the political world, to manifest to the haughty world rulers that God demands governments and nations to behave according to the righteousness of God’s Word.
Perhaps, as the example of John the Baptist, God will be able to raise also in these last days men to represent Elijah. After all, there are many Ahabs and Herods in the modern governments and they also need to be rebuked according the Word of the Lord. They need to know and recognize that God does not move only within the Christian churches, but also among the haughty world rulers. They need to feel, through the prophetic Elijah anointing in the servants chosen by God, that their politics and behavior are an abomination in the God’s eyes.
The Ahabs who promote the state idolatry, witchcraft, prostitution and homosexuality need to know God’s power through his prophets. The Herods who live wicked sexual behaviors need to be rebuked by the prophets having the Elijah anointing.
The world rulers have no right to do as they see fit, for God gave them the specific responsibility to serve God chastising the wicked and praising those who do good. God’s Word makes clear that governors “are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good.” (1 Peter 2:14 NKJV)
All human government was called to be God’s servant in this fundamental obligation:
“For [the State] is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.” (Romans 13:4 NKJV)
However, the modern State intrudes even God’s realm promising to grant everything (health care, education, etc.) to the population and meet all of their needs, as if it were God himself! Gerald Ford, US president in the 70s, said a great truth about government:
“If the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have”.
When a government fails to be a minister of God in the mission God gave it to punish the wicked and praise those who do good and intrudes areas that God did not allow it (the control over children and education), then the State becomes a Monster.
The Brazilian government has been steadily failing in its responsibility to make Brazilian people safe from criminals, which is its obligation and also the duty God imposed on it. It has also been steadily failing in education and health care, which God did not entitle it. Result: the government takes away almost everything from its citizens, but it gives them almost nothing in return, and the little quantity the people receive is precarious and poor.
When the State wants to do everything, eventually it does almost no thing, except overburdening the population by a great number of high and unjust taxes. So much money for security, health care and education taxes and, at the end, citizens end up with no money and no one of the many state “promises” they were forced to pay at so high prices.
No government has God’s call to get involved in the control of families, children and promotion of politics of abortion, homosexuality and other perversions. The basic responsibility God gave the government is “to execute wrath on him who practices evil”. Everything that is beyond this obligation is state intrusion and may seriously be considered as illegality in the God’s eyes. The Elijahs of God will confront presidents, governors, mayors and other elected officials for the negligence of their obligation and will rebuke them for intruding spheres that are not proper for them.
Yet, where are the Elijahs of God to warn presidents and other governors that their government and their politics are unlawful in the God’s eyes? Where are the Elijahs of God to tell the government that its responsibility is just public security? Where are the men of God to imitate John the Baptist and say to the modern-day Herods: “What you are doing is against God’s Law”? It is very easy to come near a president or another corrupt and immoral public official and limit oneself to praise and flatter. Multitudes of religious leaders meeting high authorities do exactly so. They do not seek God’s face and when they are face to face with a governor, they have just praises, and often the governor rightly deserves rebuke and warning. There are abundant flatterers. But where are the Elijah? Where are the men with the anointed courage to tell to the presidents that their government broke the limits God gave?
The key to cultivate the Elijah anointing: the direct involvement of parents in the upbringing and education of their children
Where are the Elijah of God? They are, or they may be, in the spiritual environment proper for their development. God says:
“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”. (Malachi 4:5-6 NIV, emphasis is mine.)
In our time, the State has been getting children to distance themselves from their parents, for parents are not properly committing themselves in the lives of their children. With such state-induced separation, it has been very easy for parents to turn from children and children from parents.
The State, that Elijah and John the Baptist so much rebuked, has today as one of its supreme goals to control children — through schools. The state control over children and education is a recent novelty in the human history. Of course, the State alleges to defend “the right to education” of the children. Yet, even though parents have post-graduate college education, the Brazilian State, for example, does not give to those parents the right to homeschool their children, under the pretext that it wants “the best interests of the children” — which are, in fact, just a disguise to protect its best interests.
A child learning at home may receive a good education, if her parents have the means to sacrifice themselves in that education, and the State will have a hard time to sow its new and strange values in her while her parents are near. At school, even when children do not receive a proper education — and studies show that the Brazilian education is not well —, the important thing, for the State, is that faraway from their parents at least it is easier to put children in touch with different values from the values from their parents, values approved by the state criterions. The state god demands the sacrifice of children in the altar of the government indoctrination.
“Educated” is an expression virtually empty of its real meaning, for most schoolchildren who finish school today are functionally illiterate, writing and reading poorly, but very “educated” in completely unnecessary issues, as dating with birth control, abortion and free sex and pornographic sex education with a right to homosexual immorality.
The fact is that children are turning away from parents and their values, for their parents delivered them to the harmful influence of the state indoctrination of the institutional schools.
What is the advantage in a great “education” when the cost is the life and spiritual values of our children? Probably, the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ would quickly sacrifice such academic opportunities, instead of sacrificing their children for the sake of this kind of education. They would never see education as more important than the life and spiritual values of their children.
If the apostles had just those two options, of course they would choose to protect their children. Yet, there are not only those two options. Where education is concerned, the institutional school is not the only choice! When the heart of the parents turns to their children, taking on the direct supervision of their education and upbringing and refusing to turn them over to the state Monster, the heart of the children turns — not to drugs, rebellion and wicked behaviors. Their heart turns to their parents. It is no coincidence that in the homeschooling movement most children admire and respect their parents, a behavior increasingly difficult when their children have already been attending an institutional school for some years. Education is the key. The State knows it. God’s Word teaches it. It is up for parents now to discover that important truth.
He who has control over the education of a child will have decisive influence over her values. That is why the State demands that control, even when parents have a great education. The State needs to control the education, so that it may have total freedom to preach and teach its “democratical” values — that are not anything more than its “gospel” of humanism, socialism, feminism, homosexualism and liberalism. The State needs to control the children, so that it may have total freedom to turn them into disciples of that “gospel”.
The state Monster uses the educational system to create small and big monsters according to its own image and likeness, so that they may learn from the state masters that what is an abomination in God’s eyes is normal for the state Monster, and that what is just and right in God’s eyes is abomination for the state Monster. There are abundant examples of that reality. The state Monster in Brazil sees as abomination the instruction of Proverbs giving parents the right and full freedom to discipline, through a rod of correction, the wicked behavior of their children. But it sees as normal and just to deliver, in adoption, children to gay couples.
The Brazil Without Homophobia campaign of the Lula government wants all Brazilians to respect sodomy. Parents not respecting sodomy run the risk of losing the custody over their children — which may be granted to a homosexual “couple”. Only a Monster could behave this way. And such Monster is real: it is the State.
The state Monster sees as normal to deliver unborn babies to the extermination of the legal abortion. For it, it is normal to teach schoolchildren that homosexuality and sex without marriage are life options and deserve respect.
The state Monster requires, in the religious classes in the public schools, Jesus Christ to be put in the same level of the gods of Candomble and other pagan and Afro-Brazilian religions.
The state Monster requires the exclusion of God and his values from schools and the social realm, under the pretext that the State is secular. The exclusion is willful, so that the place of God may be occupied by the state Monster. So, the modern State is like the old kingdoms, where paganism usurped the place that belonges to God. Today the usurper is humanism, statism, secularism, socialism and other similar ideologies.
Even with so a strong control and with draconian policies and laws governing education, the Lula government, after several years investing in the “improvement” of education, recognizes that its “objective failed” and that in the Brazilian education the “picture is negative”. In fact, it also recognizes that, even though institutional education is compulsory and homeschooling is banned, illiteracy is relatively high and that children finish fundamental education virtually unable to read and understand what they read. In other words, the government itself is saying that its education is a disaster!
In spite of that much-recognized failure, the Lula government was able to lower the compulsory school age, changing the law so that parents may be forced now to send their children to the state indoctrination of the institutional school no more at the 7-year age, but at 6. Yet, the state goal is much more ambitious:
“Information by the National Campaign for the Right to Education reveal preoccupying figures… More than 50% of the children between 0 and 6 years are not at school…”[1]
That information indicates a scary reality: in spite of the state failure in its education for children above 6 years who are forced by law to attend an institutional school, now the State worries that, below 6 years, only 50% children attend schools. The solution? Make school attendance below 6 years old compulsory too! The State is considering legal and political measures to extend its control over those little children.
The government is not happy with its performance in the illiteracy of the Brazilian children, but it is satisfied that its own laws keep children more under its own control and supervision than under the control and supervision of parents. What can then the government do when children are faraway from the direct supervision of their parents?
The Lula government has confessed its failure to educate schoolchildren in a minimally satisfactory way, but it wants to guarantee that they may have access to condoms and pornographic books at schools. The Brazilian State wants to make up for its educational failure through condoms and pornography. So schoolchildren will not worry about their low grades, for they will be intoxicated by free sex and a self-esteem induced by psychological techniques of brainwashing. They will become happy morons.
Parents who desire to invest themselves in their children for the sake of Jesus, upbringing children having their heart turned to their parents, will need the Elijah anointing, so that they may challenge the immoral state impositions requiring control over children in the education. In fact, the Superior Tribunal of Justice, perceiving the “threat” of homeschooling to the state ambitions, affirmed that “children do not belong to their parents”, in a judicial decision against a homeschool family in Brazil. The modern State, as the old pagan kingdoms, demands child sacrifices in its altars, and all effort by the Christian parents to rescue their children from that secularist and pagan sacrifice requires the Elijah anointing, requires the parental sacrifice in the lives of their children, taking on their education and the supervision and formation of their values.
The Elijah anointing is for these last days. It is for parents — to enable them to face the state absolutism. It is for parents — to enable them to dedicate themselves to the total education of their children. It is for parents — to give them courage not to deliver their children in the educational altar of the state Monster. It is for parents — to enable them to raise up prophetic children, in the anointing of Elijah and John the Baptist.
Elijah (and his last-days prophetic anointing) will convince parents to take on completely the upbringing and education of their children and the children to respect and admire their parents. That purpose has already been fulfilling itself in a startling way in the homeschooling movement, where parents turn to their children and children turn to their parents.
The homeschooling movement offers excellent opportunities to raise men and women in the anointing of Elijah and John the Baptist
Elijah (and his last-days prophetic anointing) will convince parents to reject the unfair state impositions in the sphere of upbringing and education of children. This anointing will challenge governments and politicians. It will be anointing to shake what needs for so a long time to be shaken. Before the determined state opposition to homeschooling, it is impossible for parents to get involved in that prophetic movement without challenging the corrupt, pagan and immoral State.
Yet, the cost is worthwhile. There is no greater blessing, for a family, than to have their children at the Lord Jesus’ feet, not under the paws of the state Monster and its immoral values. In order that such blessing may be a reality, God’s people, as Elijah did, will have to confront governments and authorities.
The fundamental characteristic of the prophetic lifestyle of Elijah, which will be active in the last days, is the prophetic isolation. Elijah lived completely isolated from the social sins. Surely, if there were public (state) schools in Israel in his time and if he had a family, he would not send his children to school. He would take on their education, in the Lord. That necessary isolation is part of homeschooling, where Christian children receive a good education, without the state indoctrination and without the pressures and influence of classmates who have morally problematic behaviors.
In his isolation, Elijah always sought God and got prepared to attend whenever God called him to go to society and confront its political leaders and wicked values. In homeschooling, committed parents have the opportunity to invest deeply in the spiritual, moral e educational formation of their children, preparing them to attend to God’s call in the social sphere, combating harmful values. Like Elijah, the homeschooling movement offers excellent opportunities for the parents to raise and educate children who will challenge the modern secularist, pagan, abortist, homosexualist and immoral political system.
While the aim of the Lord in the education is for parents to form their children in the Elijah anointing in these last days, the aim of the state Monster is to form the new generation in the ethical, sexual and spiritual anormality of Ahab and Herod.
Brazil and the world need Elijah’s return and many other men like him and John the Baptist.
We do not know how or when Elijah will come, but Elijah or the men having the Elijah anointing who will come will do a prophetic work of restoration in the governments, shaking the structures of sin and arrogance. Those men will have a life preparation as the life preparation Elijah and John the Baptist had.
It is much a possibility that God may have chosen the homeschooling movement to give parents the opportunity to raise children in the Elijah anointing. Those children, raised and educated isolatedly from the state indoctrination, will be strengthened in Bible values which will enable them to be God’s instruments to rebuke futurely political leaders, their immoral behaviors and their unfair policies.
Homeschooling, where parents turn to their children and children turn to their parents, is the proper soil for the “cultivation” of new Elijahs. Only this way it will be possible to escape from the curse that will occur as punishment to our nation because of the separation between parents and their children and children and their parents and because of the perverted policies of the state Monster that provoke and facilitate that separation. (See Malachi 4:6)
The opportunities of blessings are many in the homeschooling movement, but the parents who want the Elijah anointing for their children will need to pay a high cost because of the violent threats of Ahabs, Herods, Lulas and other menials of the state Monster. They demand complete control over the education of our children, a control God did not give them authority or permission to require.
In the past, the state Monster used to demand child sacrifices. That requirement has not changed. The state Monster is still thirsty for children.
Whom then we will deliver our children to? Which altar will we offer them in?
Whether by homeschooling or other Holy Spirit movements, the God who acted through Elijah is going to show to the world that he has not stopped his activities in the political world. He is going to show that he has not stopped confronting politicians in their immorality and injustice.
The best from God is still about to come.
Elijah shall come.
Portuguese version of this article: A volta do profeta Elias: o que a unção de Elias representa para as famílias e para o mundo político nestes últimos dias
Other important article by Julio Severo on prophetic homeschooling in these last days: The Mark of the Beast: The Tomorrow’s Education.
Source: Last Days Watchman
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