Between Two Worlds

Between Two Worlds
Gospel of John:  
1:49 Nathanael replied, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"
1:50 Jesus answered, "Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these." 1:51 And he said to him, "Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."

Cases are different, however whenever and wherever something significant happens, good or bad, but significant, in terms of world history, global social development, tribal or national affairs, climbing cultural heights, scientific discoveries in their always ubiquitous complexity, many times the dynamics between two personalities, friends or adversaries, are the driving force behind new tidal waves of washing away over-aged eras yielding to new ones, new structures, new dynamics locally or globally.

Competition or friendship, mentorship or open opposition, cooperation or hatred of enemies, all these pathways always require at least two persons or even personalities.

Among the Bible top, paired figures, beginning with John the Baptist and Jesus, we can find Joseph and the Pharaoh, Moses and Joshua, David and Solomon, Jonah and the Whale, but not too many people are aware of the pair of Elijah and Elisha.
Most people heard of Elijah, as he is mentioned in the Gospel more than ten times, meanwhile Elijah's number one disciple and his prophetic heir, Elisha is mentioned only once in the Gospel of Luke. It is also very easy to confuse their similar sounding names.

Nonetheless, even the very short epistle of James commemorates Elijah, that  'Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it didn't rain on the earth for three years and six months."

The old tradition holds that Elijah was not only one of the greatest prophets, who had ever lived on Earth, but also holds that Elijah ascended into Heaven.
However, his legacy was taken by Elisha properly as even Jesus said about him, in the Gospel of Luke, chapter four, that "There were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, except Naaman, the Syrian."

The way of cleansing this particular leper is so similar to baptism, that it is worth taking a glimpse at the event.

Once upon a time it happened that the chief general of the Assyrian army, called Naaman suffered from leprosy, a sickness incurable for millennia. The Assyrian King sent his general to the capital city of the Kingdom Israel, to Samaria, to the King of Israel, that he obliged the King of Israel to have Naaman cured.

The King of Israel taught about this demand that the Syrian king wants war, as it is impossible to cure someone from leprosy, at least in the 9th century BCE. Elisha the prophet sent word to his king, that sent Naaman to him, as it is indeed written in the Second Book of Kings, chapter 5, that "So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariots, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.

However, the Prophet did not even come out from his house to greet the mighty general of the Assyrian enemy, he just sent a messenger to convey his Jesus styled message, that enemy general, you just go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan.

The mighty general, even though he was a leper, got offended that Elisha did not even come out to greet him, as it is written, that 'Naaman was angry, and went away, and said, “Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Aren't Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage."

However, his armed servants convinced him, that why not? If the prophet would have asked something really hard to complete, like fasting for 40 days, or doing a 1000 mile pilgrimage on barefoot, maybe he would have considered his options in order that he might be healed.

The river Jordan was considerably close and ridiculously accessible regarding the impossibility of the cure, thus Naaman must have clung on the word he got from the prophet without seeing  him. That is a real leap of faith to swallow his pride as an enemy general, coming to the despised Jewish miracle worker, the servant of the Jewish God.

As leprosy had been an almost incurable decease, so was pride, as well, so was the lack of profound faith. He needed the extraordinary leap of faith, to obey the word of the prophet, who mediated the word of God to him. He went and immersed himself into the water of the Jordan seven times and he got healed, as it is written that " and his flesh came again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean."
It is clear, that faith was needed to get healed, like Elisha opened a bridge to the healing source, and Naaman took the leap of faith to step and walk on the bridgeway.

As the Apostle James wrote the Elijah was a human just like us, so his disciple Elisha was a man just like us. Still tradition holds that after Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind to Heaven, at the very moment Elisha received a double portion of Elijah’s power and Elisha was accepted as the leader of the sons of the prophets. Elisha then went on to perform twice as many miracles as Elijah.
Elijah was taken to Heaven, but it is also written in the Second Book of the Kings, that when “Elisha died, they buried him.” A bit later “the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. As they were burying a town man, behold, they saw a band of raiders; and they threw the man into Elisha’s tomb. As soon as the man touched Elisha’s bones, he revived, and stood up on his feet.“
Great men and woman are bound to perform miracles, as the old Siberian faith says, that there are the great blue sky above, and beneath it the green-brown ground, and between the two, the human beings are created by the Sky Grandfather, connecting the ground to the skies.

One by one we are created to be a connection between the Heaven and the Earth, as a ladder to Heaven, as we heard also the Bible story of the Ladder of Jacob.
Our Body walks on the Earth, but our hearts, dreams, visions, and prayers must reach Heaven. The Commandments, we have to obey, are given by God, as the presence of Heaven in advance on Earth, as a pathway and bridge between the visible and invisible, and God ordered that humans must serve as a spiritual landing and departure hub for the Angels of Heaven. We are often so busy with this world, that we hardly pay attention to the landing and departing angels of God, who keep coming and going to fulfill the divine behests of God in our hearts and in the world.

In order to make the invisible visible, God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, that in Him by the Holy Spirit we may gain vision and guidance to learn that the gates of Heaven are always open.
May the Lord be praised by our deeds and conduct, now and always, AMEN.