An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, for the Feast of the Holy Prophet Elijah, 7534/2026, by Priest Paul Siewers.
Today we commemorate the Holy Prophet Elijah, known in Greek and Slavonic as Elias. One of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament, he lived nearly 3,000 years ago. His life is chronicled mainly in the 3rd and 4th books of Kings in the Orthodox Christian Bible. The Prophet Malachi predicts he will return, because he did not die but was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot in a whirlwind. This is why traditionally Orthodox Churches bless cars on the Feast of Elijah. The prophet also is mentioned in the Gospels, identified with the work of John the Baptist as Forerunner, and appears talking to Christ and Moses at the Transfiguration. In references in the Book of Revelation to two mysterious witnesses standing up to the Antichrist, Holy Fathers of Orthodoxy see the final bodily return of Elijah with a lesson for our own lives. The pairing of Elijah as a figure of courage with Enoch (traditionally the main choice for the second witness, who also did not die but seems held by God for a future mysterious plan) involves a spiritually powerful combination of courage from Elijah and repentance from Enoch. That combination of courage and repentance perhaps models a grace-filled resistance to the spirit of Antichrist, which the Evangelist John tells us involves the denial that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, and which Orthodox Christian exegetes see unleashed in the world today.
Elijah originally lived little more than a century before his nation Israel would be forced into exile in Assyria, from which it would not return due to its apostasy from God, becoming part of the legend of the “lost tribes of Israel” as a result of the kingdom’s wickedness. He was a faithful prophet of God who faced off against King Ahab and Queen Jezebel of Israel who apostasized to worship the pagan Baal. Elijah by contrast offers an example of the spiritual power of a pure heart and faith. He became a prototype of Christian monasticism. The prophet gave many mighty proofs of his faith in miracles and courageous preaching. But Ahab and Jezebel seemed to have all the worldly power. He became depressed, feeling that the people of his country Israel had left their faith in the God of Abraham and of Moses. At one point, in despair, Elijah went out into the wilderness and hid in a cave at Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai. This was where Moses, about 1,500 years before Elijah, had received the law of God. God had revealed Himself by name to Moses as “I Am the Existing One,” and Jesus later referred to Himself also with that phrase “I Am.” But Elijah felt in his cave that he was the only faithful follower of the God “Who Is.”
Elijah, despite his success, was tempted by the devil in the wilderness and felt a failure. But God came to the prophet as if in a still small voice and showed His glory, to tell him that there were yet a few thousand believers in Israel. He inspired Elijah to overcome his demon of depression and continue. With God’s help, he triumphed in showing all the true God, the I Am He Who Exists, our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. In his amazing witness, Elijah was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot in a whirlwind rather than experiencing death.
From there, Elijah’s life is seen as continuing in Church tradition in another dimension. He was faithful to Moses’ vision from our Lord, and received visions from Christ, in the Old Testament, resisting decadent idol-worshipping tyrants. But King Ahab in his evil rule was a type of Antichrist, and Jezebel was a type of the Whore of Babylon also in Revelation, even as Elijah in the “other dimension” of the New Testament spiritually became identified in the Church with one of the two main witnesses against Antichrist in the final days before Christ’s Second coming.
Typical of much Old Testament prophecy, there actually are four layers to Elijah’s life biblically: (1) The historical, in the context of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, in the era before the Assyrian exile. (2) The moral, in terms of how his life may inform our own choices and faith life, in terms of living out the virtue of courage as a spiritual expression of grace. (3) The allegorical, in terms of how Elijah came to be identified with the spirit of the Forerunner John the Baptist as a courageous preacher of truth proclaiming the way of the Lord. (4) The mystical, in terms of how he is seen as one of the Two Witnesses against Antichrist.
Maybe the return of Elijah and Enoch from the Old Testament into the New sounds incredible to modern readers not familiar with Church Tradition. Yet consider the wonder-working nature of Elijah’s work in the Old Testament, defying with fire from heaven the prophets of Baal, healing and raising the dead, providing food miraculously, showing the penalty for idolatry in drought, preaching against evil. Elijah lived in effect in another dimension, one connected with Paradise, which while it had disappeared to mortal eyes in the Fall, still hovers over and around us, so much so that St. Ephrem the Syrian described Paradise as a hollow mountain above and around us, inside which we live unknowingly. This involves a different experience of space and time, in Christ.
The modern exegetist Archimandrite Athanasios Mitilinaios synthesized patristic teachings on the Book of Revelation, and wrote extensively of Elijah as one of the two witnesses who would appear just prior to the Second Coming of our Lord. Father Athanasios’s Orthodox commentary challenges us with signs of the end times, including the public widespread nature of sexual perversion and abuse of children, corruption, tnormalizing of mind-altering drugs and media, global apostasy and hostility toward traditional Christian faith. He wrote that, “we should see that while the antichrist is reigning, the two witnesses will be feverishly working on an international level for the preservation of the world, and especially for the apathetic Christians who will have believed in the works of the Antichrist. The apathetic Christians will be those most victimized by the corruption of the Antichrist, while the Church, remaining unshakably steadfast and unmercifully persecuted by the Antichrist, will have fled into the desert, in other words, back into the catacombs. Are we prepared for any of this?” he asks (vol. 3, p. 122).
We in this humble temple today are a Church in the wilderness in the sense of being in the country, off the beaten track thanks God. But more importantly we should be so in our hearts in separating ourselves from the evil of our times, and growing closer to God and to one another in the mystical union of our Lord’s Church. This is harder today because of our online world and life. But God provides for us, just as He will send His two witnesses at the right time according to Church Tradition, and restrain the power of Antichrist long enough for them to expose him and also to shore up those believers who remain faithful, and to test our faith. Still, it will not be a “happy ending.”
Scripture tells us that the Beast, or the Antichrist, that came from the bottomless pit, the abyss, will come and kill the two witnesses after a period of time, which is given as three and a half days (interpreted often as symbolic of years) in which they had preached and done true miracles against Antichrist. Scripture tells us their dead bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where our Lord was crucified (Jerusalem apparently), to be viewed for another three and a half days, unburied. Many will rejoice over their deaths and send gifts to each other, because the two witnesses had bothered them about repentance. But after the additional three days and a half of death, the Scripture tells us, “the Spirit of life from God entered into them.” They stood up. “They heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in in a cloud.”
Then in the Book of Revelation the angel sounds the seventh trumpet, and then is recorded the wonder of the Woman with child, surviving and triumphing, and the defeat of the devil. Many Church Fathers take this as a prophecy of the Church in the wilderness in the end times. The two witnesses, including Elijah, before that have their time to expose and oppose Antichrist. Then Antichrist reigns for the same period of time. But God keeps the period short, and resurrects the two witnesses as a sign of the triumph of the faithful, before the coming of Christ. Glory to God!
But will we be faithful in such trials, in the Church in the wilderness? This is a question for us in our individual daily lives, as well as for the collective end times of the world. The Beast or the Antichrist comes from the abyss or bottomless pit, a spiritual darkness devoid of true faith in God. But Archimandrite Athanasios warns that each of us, as we waver or are lukewarm potentially, are in that abyss. “This occurs, beloved, because we Christians are fully engulfed in the secular spirit and move about in this world with no regard for the existence of God, Christ, and death, hell, or the Kingdom of God. If we reach this deplorable state (God forbid) and live such a life, then we can be certain that we ourselves have become the walls of the abyss that will spew out the Antichrist.”
The Antichrist will kill the two witnesses, according to Scripture. Yet there is hope. God offers us the testimony of the witnesses, Elijah with courage and Enoch with repentance. Our Lord gives us in love the Gospel and mysteries of His Church. He gave His only begotten Son. And afterward will come the resurrection of the two witnesses and the coming again of Jesus Christ. Help is on the way.
Brothers and sisters, courage is one of the seven biblical virtues that are grace, a gift of the Holy Spirit, exemplified by Elijah. Even he faltered, but God’s grace upheld him and comforted and strengthened him, for a miraculous purpose in life. So too we look for the return of our Lord, and must keep our hearts warm and open to Him in faith and to one another through His loving grace, both in our daily personal lives, and in the challenges of the end times. Archimandrite Athanasios suggests that we test ourselves spiritually, engage in exercises, so we will not falter at the appearance of Antichrist or his forerunners, at their delusional victories, exemplified by the temporary death of the two witnesses, but will have the grace of courage like Elijah. Daily prayer, confession, fasting, heartfelt preparation and participation in the Eucharist, all guide us on the right path, so we will not despair when the witnesses are killed. They will rise again and be taken up to God. We live and move and have our being in God, as the Scriptures tell us, and in Him there are more dimensions to life than we can imagine. Even as we go out today after the service to bless our cars in memory of Elijah’s fiery chariot, he remains part of our story, as we are in his, the living story of our Lord’s Church, the Gospel story of Creation, in which we too are called to be witnesses and to be saved, and to help save others in our mission work. For as our Lord says, greater love has no man than this, than to give his life for a friend.