Born To Win Podcast - With Ronald L. Dart

The days of the prophet Elisha seem to have been somewhat unique in the history of Israel. Prophecy was vital in those days, but most of it was delivered orally. We don’t encounter much in the way of writing prophets until somewhat later. One Jewish writer, though, had this to say about a much later time in the history of the Jewish people that sheds a little light on this fact:At the same time, the prophets and the schools of prophecy, or sons of the prophets, as they are called in the Bible, were apparently centers of study and speculation in these spheres. The prophecy died out in the era of the great assembly, and this institution was faced with the additional task of handing down the spiritual heritage of the prophets to a younger generation.This comes in a discussion of the oral law and how it was handed down to later generations. Jewish scholars worked hard at this, and finally put together a written form of the oral law, called the Mishnah, and later, the Talmud. So the sons of the prophets is a

I’m still amazed at how many would-be prophets want to take on the mantle of Elijah. I think I mentioned that I have met three or four Elijahs in my time. What’s funny is that and I don’t recall anyone claiming to be a successor of Elisha, who had double the power of Elijah. That man is astonishing. But there is a reason for that. The reason is that Elijah was carried away and no one knew about his demise.Elijah was taken away and his death not recorded because he would serve as the archetype of prophets and because God intended to bring him back—not the man himself, but his spirit and power. And there is another curious aside: the idea of two men, overlapping but with one succeeding the other is repeated in the Bible. John the Baptist, according to Jesus, came in the spirit of Elijah, and then John the Baptist was followed by Jesus. And apparently this pattern will occur yet again. There is this scripture that always has people looking for Elijah:Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming o

In all of the Bible, who is the greatest example of leadership (apart from Jesus, of course)? Without a doubt, it’s David. When you speak of David in a Biblical context, the name needs no modifier. You don’t have to call him King David for a Bible reader to know exactly who you are talking about. His name occurs more than 1,000 times in the Old Testament alone.A curious fact: No one else in the Bible was ever named David. This is, I think, very unusual given the very human proclivity for naming kids after famous people. Yet, with David, it didn’t happen. It is almost as though God intended for David to be, and always be, one of a kind. Names in Hebrew mean something, and until recently, I had never looked at the meaning of David’s name, nor had I ever thought much about the characteristics of this man that made him such a great leader.He is easily the most influential and dominant figure in the Old Testament. He was the youngest of eight sons. His brothers thought he was arrogant. The

One of the most dramatic moments in all the stories of the Bible is that moment when Elijah and Elisha have crossed over the river Jordan, and a great whirlwind comes down from heaven, and a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire carries Elijah away. It was really something to see, I suppose. It was the moment when power was transferred from Elijah to Elisha, and Elisha received a double portion of the spirit of Elijah—along with his mantle. But there’s a puzzle here, and it isn’t so much that change of power. Later on, Elisha will fall sick and die of his sickness. Why was Elijah taken away so dramatically? Why didn’t he just follow his course; why didn’t he go to bed one day and die like Elisha did? What’s with this chariot and horses of fire?The assumption is that Elijah was taken up into heaven, but no one at the time thought so. The school of the prophets sent men everywhere looking for his body—wherever the tornado that took him away might have dropped him. And

It has been 62 years since the death of Solomon. For 62 years there have been two Israels: the House of Israel, now with a capital in Samaria; the House of Judah, capital in Jerusalem. You can cast your mind back 62 years from today and get a feeling for the passage of time even if you weren’t alive then. There are many old people who still remember King Solomon. And with the reign of King Ahab in Samaria, we can see how quickly a nation can go to ruin under bad leadership—how quickly they can go down the drain. And they were never, in all their history, able to find their way back.As the book of 2nd Kings opens, the scene changes from the wretchedness of King Ahab to the reign of Jehoshaphat in Jerusalem. It is more than a little confusing, simply reading straight through these books, because they are not in strict chronological order—instead interleaving events of the two kingdoms. At the end of 1 Kings, the editors dispose of King Ahab:So the king died, and was brought to Samaria; and the

Not everyone gets this, but let me have a run at it anyway: God does not care for centralized authority. That is not to say he hasn’t allowed it. And I realize that, in one sense, everything that happens is allowed by God or it wouldn’t have happened. But there is another sense in which God seems to say, Okay, what you are asking for is not the best thing for you, but I will let you do it and work with you in it. But, you are going to have considerably more pain if you go this way. A case in point is the occasion when Israel asked for a king. God didn’t like it, but he allowed it. He then proceeded to tell them what was wrong with the idea. Nevertheless, they insisted, and God didn’t reject them out of hand because of it.But there is one thing that comes through to me in that story. (This was discussed back in the series before this, on the Book of Samuel.) It is that God endorses and supports maximum freedom for a people, and that he recognizes that power corrupts. Consequently, when

In my time, I have followed a lot of election campaigns. I remember sitting in a car, in the rain, in England listening to the Democratic National Convention on the BBC when Lyndon Johnson was nominated. But in all my years of following elections, I have never seen anything quite like this election season. The political process has always been a little crazy, but this one is really strange—and I find myself wondering every time it rolls around, Is this the best we can do?As a nation, we probably expect too much of our leaders and too little of ourselves. Like everyone else, I marvel at the weakness of people running for office, and I sometimes forget that they are merely a reflection of ourselves. I recall those famous lines from Abraham Lincoln about government of the people, by the people, and for the people and I don’t see how we can escape responsibility for what our leaders do and don’t do. We can’t sidestep that issue. If there are no strong leaders before us, it is our fault.I w

I simply cannot imagine a greater prophet than Elijah. He was not a smooth man, like I suspect Isaiah was. Isaiah was a poet, and a great one at that. I see no hint of poetic utterance in any word Elijah ever spoke. But then, every prophet that God ever called was chosen for the job at hand and for the people he was sent to talk to. One prophet was a sheep herder; another a fruit picker. They were pretty much ordinary men until God made them extraordinary. And as far as I can tell, none of them were really looking for the job when they got it. They were not self-assured men, either. Take Elijah as a case in point.No prophet who ever lived, before or since, has had the massive validation that Elijah got. He stopped the rain for three-and-a-half years just to get everyone’s attention. Then he called down fire from heaven in the sight of all the people in the most dramatic way possible. Having ridiculed false prophets in the most graphic of terms, he had the people bring them down from the mountain and kil

He is the archetype of all prophets; his name was Elijah. Probably one of the reasons he is so well known is because he is so persistent in the Bible—he keeps cropping up. He was to come just before Jesus (John the Baptist, everyone sees, fulfilled that) but most students of prophecy expect him to come again at the end time. This naturally leads to a lot of pretenders. I have met three or four Elijahs myself.If you recall the caricature of a man with a long beard, wearing a robe, and carrying a sign that says, The End is Near, you have an idea what these self-appointed Elijahs looked like. And self-appointed is the word. Most modern, would-be prophets are self-appointed. Prophets, you know, are a dime a dozen. The real Elijah—the prototypical prophet—was emphatically not self-appointed, and God took him out of his toolbox to say what needed to be said. He stepped up to the plate and delivered one short sentence.And Elijah said, As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, I will surely s

I was standing, looking out an open window in my hotel room at Victoria Station in London one night. My wife and I had been to the theater, had just got back in, and opened the window for a little fresh air. I heard a rumble, uncharacteristic of London weather, and I remarked, I hope that’s thunder. It wasn’t. The IRA had set off a bomb two blocks from our hotel in a trash bin along the street. No one was hurt, but it was a little disconcerting. I can’t help wondering what the IRA realistically hoped to gain in all this. Were they really doing their thing with a goal in mind, or are they like bunch of Ozark boys turning over outhouses on Halloween?I am persuaded that, in all too many cases, people who are fighting in wars have long since forgotten what the war is all about. They don’t remember the grievance or, if they do, they have only heard about it from their great-great-grandfathers and never, in all their lifetime, experience the grievance in question. Why on earth did the Irish

When you settle in to read the Bible, you run into any number of difficulties—none of them fatal, of course. The sense of the Bible is not that hard, it is just that the writers of the Bible wrote, not only in a different language, but out of a different culture. Things that would be important to the modern reader don’t even cross their minds. There are mysteries in the Bible, to be sure, but there is enough plain talk for us to know where we stand with God. The more difficult problem is that the modern reader is used to history being presented in a certain way. The ancient writers of history operated on somewhat different principles.One of the confusing things, for example, about reading the Book of Kings is the structure of the book. 1 Kings tells the story of the division of Israel into two kingdoms. After that, the story interleaves the parallel history of the two kingdoms and it is easy to get lost. There are any number of Bible handbooks and encyclopedias that provide charts and chronologies

At the Last Supper, after washing his disciples' feet, Jesus said something of singular importance. He said, You call me master and lord, and you say well for so I am. The American reader is likely to take these two words, master and lord, as synonyms; but when the King James translators sat down and wrote this out, the head of a school was a master. Even to this day in most English schools the person who runs the school is the headmaster. Consequently, they chose the word master because to their English readers it would convey the idea of a teacher; and not merely a garden-variety, run-of-the-mill teacher, but a significant master of his subject.Jesus said, You call me teacher and lord, and rightly so because that is what I am. The words in the Greek mean a master of a school and a sovereign lord, so they are not synonyms at all; and they define two very different relationships that a person will have with Jesus Christ. So let's take a closer look at these two words, these two relationships, and their signif

By now, everyone realizes that we have a leadership crisis, not only in our country, but in the world at large. I wonder how we got to this place? Where does leadership come from and, maybe more importantly, where does it go? I believe that leadership is a gift from God, and if you’ll spare me a little time, I’ll explain to you why I think that. First, two statements about gifts from God, one from James and one from the Psalms:Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.James 1:17 KJ2000You have ascended on high, you have led captivity captive: you have received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.Psalm 68:18–19 KJ2000For some reason, we would tend to assume that God only gives his gifts to people who deserve them. I used to think so. I would ha

Never take counsel of your fears. The saying is often attributed to Andrew Jackson who also, plainly, read his Bible. It is fascinating how often fear strips a man of victories already won. This was the case with one Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. After the death of Solomon, God handed him the largest portion of Israel—10 of the 12 tribes. He was a good man, and an energetic leader. But he was afraid that, having made the break with Solomon’s son Rehoboam, the people would eventually return to the unity of the Temple. It was not an unreasonable fear except for the fact that God had given him the kingdom and stood surety for it. This fear led him to a decision with disastrous long-term consequences.Therefore the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in Dan. And this thing became a sin: for the people wen

When you read those books of the Bible that contain the history of Israel, the lessons come at you one after the other. There is a man in the Book of Kings named Jeroboam, for example, who will embody several of them. Jeroboam is described as a mighty man of valor. Now, what that means in biblical-speak is that he was a fighter, and very good at it. He was a good man, an able man, and King Solomon promoted him and placed him over all the affairs of the house of Joseph. That made him the head man in the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh in the north. But he had a higher endorsement than that of Solomon, with whom God was, by this time, thoroughly disappointed.And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way; and he had clad himself with a new garment; and the two were alone in the field: And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and tore it in twelve pieces: And he said to Jeroboam, Take you ten pieces: for thus says the Lord

When you are reading the history in the Bible, you have to resist the temptation to see things in terms familiar to the modern reader. Take the idea of cities, for example. Solomon has finished the Temple, and somewhere along the way, he has married the daughter of Pharaoh.Well, Pharaoh wants to give his daughter a present, so he goes up along the coastal plain and takes a city named Gezer. He slew the Canaanites who live there, burnt the place with fire, and then gave it to his daughter as a present. What kind of a present is that! Gezer probably wasn’t much of a town to start with. Now his daughter gets, as a present from her dad, a lot of burnt-out houses, and a few hundred corpses of Canaanites. What is this?What you need to take away from the account is that it wasn’t the houses that were important, it was the real estate. Gezer might have controlled a few hundred square miles of good agricultural land. And it may also have provided a prime location for an outpost—a fortress, if you wil

One of the most incredible museums that the world has ever known was also one that hardly anyone ever got to visit; it was the temple that King Solomon built. When the construction of the Temple was finally complete, Solomon brought in the things that King David had dedicated—silver, gold, furnishings—and placed them in the Temple’s treasuries. What a museum it must have made…but the general population never got to go in. Nevertheless, the grand opening still made for quite an enjoyable party. You’ll find the story of this celebration, and the dedication speech that accompanied it, in 1 Kings, chapter 8.1 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of the tribes, the chiefs of the fathers of the children of Israel, unto king Solomon in Jerusalem, that they might bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion.2 And all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto king Solomon at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the s

We Christians have an anxiety about us—about who we are, about our failures, about our differences, about our spats—and we let these anxieties prevent us from doing and saying things that need to be said and done; not only in church, but in the community and in the world.Peggy Noonan - Patriots, Then and Now Link 1 | Link 2

Do you suppose God would ever call a man to be a lawyer or, perhaps, a governor? (And, no, I am not about to tell a lawyer joke.) There is a funny thing about Christian thinking when it comes to a divine calling. We tend to think of God's calling having solely to do with church work or ministry. But is that the right view of the matter?There are two men in the Bible who cause me to think otherwise. They weren't called to be lawyers, but they were nonetheless called to a surprising vocation. Let me tell you their stories:Once upon a time, there was a man named Jacob who had 12 sons—all born to him while out of country. The last was born of the wife that Jacob loved. He was named Joseph, which means added because he was added well beyond the expected family. And because he was the son of Jacob’s old age and of his most loved wife, he was a favorite son, and Jacob made him the famous coat of many colors.When the lad was a mere 17 years old, he was bringing performance reports to his father that did n