By your endurance you will gain your lives.
The episode of the golden calf finds a parallel in
the days of the Kings of Israel. In the ninth century B.C.E. Ahab marries the
Tyrian princess Jezebel who reintroduces devotion to Baal worship. Before long
Israel is deep in apostasy and God sends Elijah the prophet to minister to the
wayward Northern Kingdom. Elijah ’s
efforts culminate to the test on Mt. Carmel where again we have as in the golden calf
incident, Israel
The events on Mt. Carmel Elijah as an results of their Ba'al
worship. Rabbinic historians say that
the drought only lasted fourteen months; why then did both Yeshua and James
mention that it lasted three and half year (Luke 4:25; James 5:17)? Joseph
Fitzmyer explains that the drought lasted fourteen months straddling over a
three and half years period, and that this duration of the drought paralleled
the length of the period of distress in apocalyptic literature (Dan. 7:25; Rev.
12:6).
In both the golden calf and the Mt Carmel episode we
have an impatient people turning to a wild idolatrous party. In the one they
wait for Moses to return with the Torah, in the other they wait for the rain
(the Hebrew words for ‘rain’ and ‘Torah’ are of the same etymological family).
Will it be the same at the end of time? Hear these Words of warning from the
Master, For as were the days of Noah , so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as
in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and
giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were
unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of
the Son of Man (Matt.
24:37-39). Blessed is that servant whom
his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set
him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, 'My
master is delayed,' and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks
with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not
expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put
him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of
teeth (Matt.
24:46-51).
These last 2,000 years of waiting for the return of
the Master may seem long, but not as long as to those from whom the revelation
of Messiah has been withheld. We have the assurance that, After
two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may
live before him (Hos.
6:2) (a day is as thousand years to the Lord (Psalms 90:4;
2 Pet. 3:8)).
May we patiently wait for him, each day doing our
best to follow in his footsteps and shining the light of his Torah to all
around us. May he find us and ours doing so at his return.
May it be soon, even in our days!
