He Heard From God Once and Never Again

There was one hour and he is not going to describe it, partly because he cannot and partly because he has watched what happens when he tries.

It was real. He is completely certain about that and has never once wavered on it, which is unusual for him, because he doubts nearly everything else including things he can see.

That was eleven years ago.

And there has been nothing since. Not a smaller version, not an echo, nothing he could stretch into something. Eleven years of ordinary weather.

What that has done is strange, and he has never had the words for it. The hour is the most solid thing he has, and it is also the thing that makes the rest of it harder, because now he knows what it is like when something happens, and he has eleven years of comparison that he did not have before.

The prophet got the display and was told God was not in it

There is a scene where a man who had seen fire fall from heaven is given the entire show, and the passage says three times what was not in it.

And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. (1 Kings 19:11-12, King James Version)

Not in the wind. Not in the earthquake. Not in the fire.

And this is Elijah, who had already had the biggest public demonstration in the Old Testament, on a mountain, in front of a nation. He had the hour. He is the man with the hour.

And that chapter is him under a tree asking to die, some weeks later, with nothing since.

You are not the first man to have one behind him and nothing after. 1 Kings 19 puts the man with the biggest demonstration in the collection under a tree with nothing, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old sequence stop reading like a personal failure.

The book describes whole eras like this

There is a line at the start of Samuel that is a report about a period of time rather than about a person.

And the word of the LORD was precious in those days; there was no open vision. (1 Samuel 3:1)

No open vision.

That is a straight description of an era. Not a comment on anybody's condition and not a diagnosis of a generation.

The writer records it the way you would record a drought, as a fact about the weather over a stretch of years, and then the story continues and a boy hears something in the night.

You are inside something the book describes as a period rather than as a verdict. 1 Samuel 3 reports it as an era and moves on, and it is His Spirit who makes an old report reach a man counting eleven years.

Paul names what the ordinary arrangement is

There is a short sentence in Corinthians that says what the normal mode is, and it is not the hour.

For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)

Walk by faith, not by sight.

That is written by a man who had his own hour, on a road, with a light and a voice, and who then spent the rest of his life on the other arrangement.

He does not describe the road as the standard and everything after as a falling off. He describes walking, which is what a man does for years at a time, and names which of the two it runs on.

You are on the arrangement the man with his own hour called walking. 2 Corinthians 5 names it in five words, and it is the Holy Spirit who is described everywhere else as what a man walks in.

Peter had the mountain and said something surprising about it

There is a passage where Peter mentions the transfiguration, which is about as strong an hour as anybody in the collection had.

He says he was there. He heard the voice. He names the mountain.

And then this:

We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place. (2 Peter 1:19)

More sure.

He is comparing the written word with an experience he personally had on a mountain with an audible voice, and he says the written one is the more reliable of the two.

That is a startling thing for an eyewitness to say and he says it in writing, to people who had not been there.

You have something the eyewitness himself called more sure than his own hour. 2 Peter 1 makes the comparison explicitly, and it is His Spirit who is credited in the very next verse with the whole of it.

And Hebrews gives the definition

There is a sentence in Hebrews that defines the thing, and the definition is about what is not currently visible.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

The evidence of things not seen.

That is not a description of a man who is currently experiencing something. It is a description of what a man is holding when he is not.

And the chapter that follows it is a list of people who mostly died without receiving what they were promised, which the writer says outright a few verses from the end.

You are described by what you are holding rather than by what is happening. Hebrews 11 defines it in terms of the unseen and then lists people who died still waiting, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old definition reach a man with one hour and eleven years.