Elijah and the Two Comings

Trypho said: “The people who say that he was born a man, and was chosen and anointed, and in that way became Christ, seem to me to talk more plausibly than you and the people who say the things you are saying. All of us expect that the Christ will be a man born of human parents, and that Elijah will come and anoint him. But if this man turns out to be the Christ, then he has to be recognized in every way as a man born of human parents. And since Elijah has not come, my conclusion is that this man is not the one.” [a]

So I asked him again, “Does not Scripture say, through Zechariah, that Elijah will come before that great and terrible day of the Lord?” “Certainly.” “Then if Scripture forces you to admit that two comings of Christ were foretold — one in which he would appear open to suffering, without honor, and with no beauty to him, and the other in which he would come in glory as the judge of all, as has already been shown from many of the passages I quoted — must we not understand that the word of God has announced that Elijah will be the forerunner of that great and terrible day, which is to say, of his second coming?” “Certainly,” he answered.

“Our Lord too,” I went on, “handed down in his teaching that this very thing would happen, when he said that Elijah would also come. And we know it will happen when our Lord Jesus Christ comes in glory from heaven. Before his first appearing, the Spirit of God that had been in Elijah went ahead as his herald in John, a prophet who arose in your nation, after whom no other prophet has appeared among you. Sitting by the Jordan River, John called out: “I baptize you with water, for repentance. But one stronger than I is coming, and I am not fit to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand; he will clean out his threshing floor and gather the wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn up with a fire that is never put out.”

And this same prophet your king Herod had locked up in prison. When Herod’s birthday was being kept and his niece pleased him with her dancing, he told her to ask for whatever she wanted. The girl’s mother put her up to asking for the head of John, who was in the prison; and when she asked, Herod sent word and gave the order to have John’s head brought in on a platter. That is why our Christ, while he was on earth, said to the people who were claiming that Elijah had to come before the Christ: “Elijah will come and restore everything. But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him; they did to him whatever they wanted.” And it is written, “Then the disciples understood that he had been speaking to them about John the Baptist.”

And Trypho said: “This too strikes me as an extraordinary thing to say — that the prophetic Spirit of God that was in Elijah was also in John.” I answered, “Do you not think the same thing happened with Joshua son of Nun, who took over the leadership of the people after Moses, when Moses was told to lay his hands on Joshua and God himself said, ‘I will take some of the spirit that is in you and put it on him’?” “Certainly.”

“Then just as, while Moses was still among men, God took from the spirit that was in Moses and transferred it to Joshua, in the same way God was able to make the spirit that was in Elijah come to John. The point is this: just as Christ at his first coming appeared without glory, so the first coming of that spirit — which stayed pure in Elijah all along, as Christ’s own does — was to be understood as without glory. “For it is said that the Lord makes war on Amalek with a hidden hand, and you will not deny that Amalek fell. But if war is only to be waged against Amalek at Christ’s glorious coming, what would come of the word that says, ‘God makes war on Amalek with a hidden hand’? You are able to see that the hidden power of God belonged to Christ the crucified, before whom the demons shudder — and, quite simply, all the rulers and authorities of the earth.”

Trypho said: “You seem to me to have come through a great deal of argument with a great many people about every point we have been looking into, and so to be ready with an answer to anything you are asked. Answer me this first, then: how can you show that there is another God besides the Maker of all things? And after that you can show that he submitted to being born through the virgin.” I replied, “Let me first quote some passages from the prophecy of Isaiah, the ones spoken about the way John — the baptizer and prophet — went on ahead of this Lord of ours, Jesus Christ.” “Granted,” he said. [i]

Then I said, “This is how Isaiah foretold John’s going on ahead: ‘And Hezekiah said to Isaiah: The word of the Lord that he has spoken is good. Let there be peace and righteousness in my days.’ And this:

‘Comfort the people. You priests, speak to the heart of Jerusalem and comfort her, because her humiliation has been filled up. Her sin is undone, because she has received from the Lord’s hand double for her sins. A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the ways of the Lord; make the paths of our God straight. Every ravine will be filled in, and every mountain and hill brought low; all the crooked places will become straight, and the rough ground smooth roads. And the glory of the Lord will be seen, and all flesh will see the salvation of God, for the Lord has spoken.

‘A voice saying: Cry out. And I said: What am I to cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory of a human being is like the flower of the grass. The grass has withered and its flower has fallen, but the word of the Lord stays forever. Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good news to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem. Lift it up, do not be afraid. Say to the cities of Judah: Here is your God. Look, the Lord is coming with strength, and his arm with dominion. Look, his wages are with him, and his work is in front of him. Like a shepherd he will shepherd his flock; with his arm he will gather the lambs, and he will comfort the one that is carrying young.

‘Who has measured the water with his hand, and the sky with the span of his hand, and all the earth in his fist? Who has weighed the mountains on a scale and the wooded valleys on a balance? Who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counselor, to instruct him? Or with whom did he take counsel, and who instructed him? Or who showed him judgment? Or who taught him the way of understanding? All the nations are like a drop from a bucket; they are counted like the tipping of a balance, and they will be counted like spit. Lebanon is not enough to burn, and the four-footed animals are not enough for a whole burnt offering; and all the nations are nothing, and are counted as nothing.’”

When I stopped, Trypho said: “Every word of the prophecy you recite, sir, is ambiguous, and there is nothing in any of it sharp enough to prove what you want to prove.” I answered, “If the prophets had not stopped — if there had gone on being prophets in your nation after this John — then perhaps you might take these sayings to be ambiguous. But John came first, calling on people to repent; and Christ came while John was still sitting by the Jordan River and put an end to his prophesying and baptizing, and himself announced the good news, saying that the kingdom of heaven is near, and that he must suffer many things from the scribes and Pharisees, and be crucified, and rise on the third day, and appear again in Jerusalem, and once more eat and drink with his disciples. He also gave notice beforehand that in the time between his comings, as I said earlier, sects and false prophets would arise using his name — and that is plainly what is happening. So how can any of it still be ambiguous, when the facts themselves are there to convince you? “And this is how he spoke about there being no more prophets in your nation, and about people recognizing that the new covenant God long ago announced he would put in place was already there — that is, that he himself was it: ‘The law and the prophets were until John the Baptist; from that time the kingdom of heaven is taken by force, and the forceful seize it. And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.’ [l]

“And it was foretold through Jacob the patriarch that there would be two comings of Christ; that in the first he would be open to suffering; that after he came there would be neither prophet nor king in your nation — so I pressed on — and that the nations, believing in the Christ who suffers, would wait for him to come again. That is why the Holy Spirit had said these things in a figure and under a veil. “This is how it was put — I went on — ‘Judah, your brothers have praised you; your hands are on the back of your enemies; your father’s sons will bow down to you. Judah is a lion’s cub; from a young shoot, my son, you have grown up. He lay down and slept like a lion, and like a lion’s cub; who will rouse him? A ruler will not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until what is laid up for him comes; and he will be the expectation of the nations, tying his foal to the vine and the foal of his donkey to the vine’s tendril. He will wash his robe in wine and his cloak in the blood of the grape. His eyes are bright from wine, and his teeth white as milk.’ [p]

“As for the claim that prophet and ruler never failed in your nation, from the time it began until this Jesus Christ came and suffered — you will not have the nerve to say it, and you cannot prove it. For even though you say that the Herod at whose hands he suffered was an Ashkelonite, you still say there was a high priest in your nation at the time. So even then you had a man who presented offerings according to the law of Moses and kept the rest of the legal observances, and you had prophets in unbroken succession down to John. It was the same when your people were carried off to Babylon, when your land was fought over and the holy vessels carried away: a prophet never failed among you, a man who was lord and leader and ruler of your people. For the Spirit that was in the prophets was the one who anointed your kings and installed them. “But after our Jesus Christ appeared in your nation and was put to death, nowhere has there been or is there a prophet. What is more, you have stopped living under a king of your own, your land has been laid waste, and it has been left like a watchman’s hut in an orchard. And when the word said, through Jacob, ‘and he will be the expectation of the nations,’ it was pointing in symbols to his two comings and to the nations coming to believe in him — which you can at long last see for yourselves. For we, who out of all the nations have become God-fearing and righteous through faith in Christ, are the ones waiting for him to come again.

“And that phrase, ‘tying his foal to the vine, and the foal of the donkey to the vine’s tendril,’ was an announcement in advance of both the works he did at his first coming and the belief the nations would come to have in him. For they were like an unsaddled colt with no yoke of its own on its neck, until this Christ came and, sending his disciples out to them, made disciples of them; and they took up the yoke of his word, put their backs under it, and endured everything for the sake of the good things he had promised and they were waiting for. “And in fact, when our Lord Jesus Christ was about to go into Jerusalem, he told his disciples to bring him a donkey that was tied up with her colt at the entrance to a village called Bethphage; and he sat on it and rode into Jerusalem. Since he did this exactly as it had been prophesied in plain words that the Christ would do, and since it was recognized when it was done, it made it clear that he was the Christ. And with all of this done and proved from the Scriptures, you are still hard-hearted. [t]

“Zechariah, one of the twelve, prophesied that it would happen, in these words: ‘Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; shout aloud, proclaim it, daughter of Jerusalem. Look, your king will come to you, righteous and himself bringing salvation, gentle and poor, mounted on a beast of burden and on the foal of a donkey.’ “Now the prophetic Spirit, along with the patriarch Jacob, named both a donkey already under the yoke and her colt as being in his possession; and he himself, as I said before, told his disciples to bring both animals. That was an announcement in advance that people from your synagogue, together with people from the nations, would believe in him. For as the unsaddled colt was a symbol of those out of the nations, so the saddled donkey was a symbol of those out of your own people; the law laid on you through the prophets is what you carry.

“Through the prophet Zechariah it was also foretold that this same Christ would be struck and his disciples scattered — which is what happened. After he was crucified, the disciples who were with him were driven apart, until he rose from the dead and convinced them that it had been prophesied of him that he would suffer this way. Once they were convinced, they went out into the whole inhabited world and taught these things. That is why we too stand firm in faith in him and in being taught by him; our conviction comes from the prophets, and from the God-fearing people who can be seen all over the world, made such in the name of that crucified man. Here is what Zechariah said: ‘Sword, rise up against my shepherd, and against the man of my people, says the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd, and his sheep will be scattered.’

“And the words that Moses recorded and the patriarch Jacob prophesied — ‘he will wash his robe in wine and his cloak in the blood of the grape’ — made plain that he was going to wash clean, with his own blood, those who believe in him. For the Holy Spirit called those who receive forgiveness of sins through him his robe; he is always present among them in power, and he will be present in plain sight at his second coming. “And in saying ‘the blood of the grape,’ the word has shown by that very device that Christ does have blood — not from human seed, but from the power of God. For just as it was not a man but God who produced the blood of the vine, so the word announced in advance that Christ’s blood too would come not from human stock but from the power of God. And this prophecy I have been quoting, gentlemen, proves that the Christ is not a man born of human parents in the ordinary human way.” [z]

Trypho answered: “We will keep this explanation of yours in mind, if you back up this difficulty as well with other arguments. But for now take up the argument again and show us that the prophetic Spirit acknowledges another God besides the Maker of all things — taking care not to name the sun and the moon, which, as it is written, God allowed the nations to worship as gods. The prophets often use that way of speaking loosely, saying, ‘Your God is God of gods and Lord of lords,’ and often adding, ‘the great and strong and terrible one.’ “These things are not said as though there really were gods. They are said because Scripture is teaching us that, of all who are reckoned gods and lords, the one who really is God, the one who made all things, is Lord alone. To prove this very point the Holy Spirit said through holy David, ‘The gods of the nations, the ones reckoned to be gods, are idols of demons and not gods.’ And he brings down a curse on those who make them and worship them.” [ab]

And I replied, “These are not the proofs I was going to bring forward, Trypho — I know these ones condemn the people who worship such things. I meant proofs that no one will be able to argue against. They will seem strange to you, even though you read them every day; and that is one more way for you to understand that because of your wickedness God has hidden from you the ability to see the wisdom in his words. There are exceptions: some for whom, by the grace of his deep compassion, as Isaiah said, he has left a seed for salvation, so that your people would not be utterly destroyed like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. So pay attention to what I am going to bring back to your memory out of the holy Scriptures — passages that need no explaining, only listening to.