Revelation 11:6; Power to Shut Heaven
Revelation 11:6 These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.
“So send I You” is called the greatest missionary hymn of the twentieth century. This hymn has been selected by many Christian leaders as the finest missionary hymn of the twentieth century. It was first published in 1954 after having been written sixteen years earlier by a Canadian school teacher, Margaret Clarkson.
Margaret Clarkson, who was born in 1915, was a teacher in a gold-mining camp in northern Ontario, Canada. It was a lonely life for this woman, but she also knew that this is where God wanted her to serve Him. She had a great desire to be a missionary on a foreign field but because of her health was unable to go. One day she was reading again the verse John 20:21, “Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” While meditating on this verse she wrote the words to a hymn that has become a favorite during missionary conferences, “So Send I You.”
This was her testimony: “In 1935 teaching jobs were so scarce that I had to take my first job as a teacher in a lumber camp some 1400 miles from home, out in the Rainy River District of northwestern Ontario. From there I moved to the gold mining camp of Kirkland Lake, 450 miles north of Toronto. In all, I spent seven years in the north. I experienced loneliness of every kind; mental, cultural, but particularly spiritual, for in all of those seven years I never found real Christian fellowship – churches were modern and born-again Christians almost non-existent.
I was studying the Word one night and meditating on the loneliness of my situation and came in my reading to John 20, and the words ‘So send I you’. Because of a physical disability I knew that I could never go to the mission field, but God seemed to tell me that night that this was my mission field, and this was where He had sent me. I was then twenty-hree, in my third year of teaching. I had written and published verse all of my life, so it was natural to put my thoughts into verse.”
The ministry of the two witnesses has a resemblance to the ministry of Elijah. Elijah commanded fire from heaven to devour an altar as a challenge to the Baal prophets to Israel’s God or Baal is the living and true God.
Elijah was the missionary sent by God to the Northern Kingdom during the time of the divided kingdom. His presence was as light shining amidst gross spiritual darkness. Idolatry had crept into Israel years back and it has sunk its roots deep especially in the leadership of Israel. It penetrated the society like wildfire causing untold damage to the spiritual life of God’s people. We had just seen last week how God sent Elijah to confront king Ahab for robbing the field that belonged to Naboth, his neighbour. Elijah was sent by God to pronounce judgment upon king Ahab.
This is the biblical illustration that James gave of effectual fervent prayer of Elijah when he pronounced a drought upon Israel.
James 5:17-18 Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. 18And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
The scene before us is one of crisis. The drought in Israel had gone on for 3 ½ years. Starvation plagued the land, people have died. The condition was devastating. Cattle and flock have languished. The people have backslid. They went after other gods. God raised Elijah to challenge the evil regime of the Baal worshippers. Elijah won. Fire came down from heaven to authenticate the power of Elijah’s God. Elijah’s God, Jehovah, the God of Israel, is the living and true God. Not the dumb idols called Baal and Astheroth. The victory was thorough. Elijah proceeded to kill the 450 false prophets that devoured the land.
The rebellion of men’s heart were no different from Elijah’s time.
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
May God be merciful! Or no man can be saved. Amen.