The Prophet Elijah (or in the Russian version Ilya the Prophet) is a well-known figure and very beloved by the people. The most characteristic feature of this character, however, was not God's chosenness, but the presence of our Ilya's air vehicle - a fiery chariot, on which he, avoiding death, rushed straight to heaven.
The nature of Elijah's chariot was argued in the Middle Ages, and it is still argued today.
The legendary character Elijah the Prophet first appears in the Old Testament, in the Third and Fourth Books of Kings.
The time of his life is attributed to the reign of King Ahab, his wife, the power-hungry Jezebel, and their successor Ahaziah. True, in the native places of the prophet Elijah was called a little differently - Eliyahu, and he was, say, cruel-hearted and fanatical.
Man-made miracles
This Eliyahu became famous for his fanatical faith and hatred of the pagans. He decided once and for all to put an end to the polytheism that flourished at the court of Ahab.
Ahab, although he was an Israelite, married a Phoenician pagan, who established in her husband's state the cults of Baal and Astarte that she was accustomed to with the accompanying human sacrifices.
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As an educational measure, the prophet first sent famine and drought to the pagan people, which was accompanied by many deaths among the poorest strata of the then population, and then promised by the power of his faith to give the lost the long-awaited rain and prosperity.
The only condition of heavenly grace, he set forth the holding of a competition between the priests of Baal and himself: whose god wins, that faith is true. Jezebel pitted about five hundred Baal priests against Eliyahu alone. The Prophet looked the same: in rags, with a knobby staff, with a leather belt on his hips, barefoot and matted hair. Against the backdrop of beautifully dressed and fragrant priests on the occasion of praying for rain on Mount Carmel, he seemed doomed to defeat.
The challenge between the contestants was simple: make it rain. For this, the priests performed their pagan rituals with the intended sacrifices, but the sky did not rain down upon them. By prayer to Eliyahu, the rain poured almost instantly. However, the dispute did not end there: the prophet demanded that justice be done and with his own hands slaughtered all the poor fellow priests right on the spot by the waters of the Jordan, where, centuries later, John the Baptist would baptize Jesus Christ! Such was the kind and sincere prophet Eliyahu.
But even this he did not rest: when King Ahab, disgraced and saddened by the death of the pagan priests, set off in a chariot to his palace, the prophet Eliyahu ran about thirty kilometers ahead of the royal cortege and, obviously, demonstrated to this Israeli majesty all the power of his contempt and triumph. Ahab could only resign himself, but his wife Jezebel did not forgive the execution of her priests, and Eliyahu fled from her anger to the desert, where he settled in a cave and fed with God's help: the crows used by the heavenly patron brought him food - twice a day, morning and evening, they supplied the prophet with meat and bread.
After sitting out the queen's anger in the cave, he returned and finally pacified Ahab, accusing him of economic crimes of that time: he illegally took the vineyard from a respected person. And when Ahab was replaced by Ahaziah, he did not allow him to return to paganism (Ahaziah wanted to establish the cult of Beelzebub). Over the years, the loneliness of Eliyahu grew sick of, and he chose for himself a disciple Elisha, who remained with our hero until his disappearance on a fiery chariot.
Disappearance of Eliyahu
We know about this event only from the words of Elisha, who, as he claims, was personally present at the disappearance of the prophet. It was like this: Eliyahu walked with his student along the road and talked about the benefits of monotheism and the dangers of pagan polytheism, the student listened to his teacher and listened to every word, when suddenly Eliyahu told his student that his time had come and God would take him to heaven alive as a reward for faith and virtuous behavior, and added: ask, they say, what to do to you before I am taken from you.
Elisha also wanted to receive at least a little heavenly grace, and he cried out to the teacher with these words: "Let the spirit that is in you be on me twice." Eliyahu answered him like this: “You are asking difficult. If you see how I will be taken from you, it will be so for you, but if you don’t see it, it will not be.” And suddenly a sparkling cloud appeared above them, and from this cloud something like a fiery chariot was formed, and fiery horses were clearly visible in the cloud.
Eliyahu gave his disciple his mantle (the cape of those times) and was immediately taken away by a cloud, and the chariot of fire flew into heaven. And Elisha, looking at the empty sky and the teacher's mantle in his hands, only exclaimed with despair and delight: "My Father, my Father, Israel's chariot and His cavalry!" And then he tore his clothes and cried.
This is how the Bible tells us about it.
It is believed that Eliyahu was taken to heaven alive, like his antediluvian relative, the prophet Enoch, and that he will return to Earth in due time when the hour of heavenly judgment comes, that is, in the last times. True, according to the same texts, Eliyahu already appeared from his heavens: once he incarnated in John the Baptist to signify the appearance of Jesus Christ, the next time we need to wait for him when the Antichrist appears, because Eliyahu must recognize the false messiah and publicly announce this …
Vehicle under the "X" sign
But what is the chariot in which the prophet drove off into the blue of heaven? And where did this chariot take him? The naive faith of the early Christians did not question the existence of the chariot.
On the contrary, they believed that the horses of the prophet were white without a single spot, six in number, and appeared in a cloud of fire, and the prophet himself, of course, went to heaven and is in the glory of God.
Gradually, this Christian myth acquired an accompanying detailing: the horses received fiery manes and fiery horseshoes, and if the peoples on earth behave badly, the prophet Eliyahu - now, of course, Elijah - can unleash his horses in heaven and throw a horseshoe at sinners, which is why there will be an obligatory death. They also connected their Elijah with various heavenly phenomena - thunderstorms, comets, tornadoes, which this saint (and Elijah was the only one of the Old Testament prophets to receive such an honor) shows people to return to the path of the righteous.
But in later times, when mythology lost ground, and faith became pragmatic, they began to see in the prophet's chariot exactly those phenomena that he should, by naive faith, send down. And several versions of Elijah's ascension were born, concerning just his transport to heaven.
According to the first such version, Elijah was taken up not at all on a chariot, but during a strong tornado, accompanied by light phenomena, that is, Elijah was simply sucked into the celestial funnel, and the only thing that remained of him was the same mantle in the hands of Elisha. And everything would be fine, but the mantle in the event of a tornado should have been torn to shreds. According to the second version, Elijah was destroyed by a lightning strike, which burned his body so that not even ashes remained, which is technically impossible, and this is known to everyone who studies lightning.
According to the third version, Elijah was burned and scattered by a heavenly fireball that exploded above the ground, and this is also technically impossible, since then there would be no witness of his ascension, Elisha, who did not suffer in any way. So the disappearance of Elijah cannot be explained by any heavenly phenomenon. Everything that kills a person in this way leaves traces, and no witnesses remain.
In fact, what happened to Elijah is not known to anyone, not even his disciple. It is likely that there was no cloud, no horses and no chariot in that cloud, but there was a splash of discontent with the prophet, and he was kidnapped by the most ordinary earthly chariot with the most ordinary earthly warriors sent by an angry king who hated the cruel and fanatical prophet.
But the disciple Elisha, who saw heaven signs everywhere and believed the words of his teacher, painted this sad event with heavenly light, and the earthly horses turned into heavenly ones, the earthly chariot into fiery chariot, and the clouds of dust from under the hooves of the army into a sparkling cloud that descended personally behind a prophet.
Andrey VASILIEV