I’ve always been amazed at the story of Elijah and Elisha and the day that God took Elijah up into heaven in a whirlwind and chariot and horses of fire. The story has captivated me from my youth, and recent events in my life have drawn it more into focus.

I stood in a service about 3-4 years ago and a former pastor of mine commented on how that a young man had told him he “wanted his mantle.” He spoke before the congregation that day and said that he did not think a mantle could be passed down. I felt a check in my spirit that day, because not too long before that in another church in another city, I sat in the office of a powerful minister of God whose preaching had shaped, changed and affected my life from my childhood.

I remember standing in awe in his office and telling him about how at a very young age I had attended a youth camp and heard him preach only a year or two after I received the Holy Ghost. I was young then, probably only 11-13 years old and I had already accepted the fact that I had a calling on my life, but like so many among us that come from outside the ranks of Pentecost, I fit like a fifth-wheel or a square peg in a round hole. I told him about a fire-side consecration service that week when I’d asked God for a double portion of that evangelist’s anointing…and told him in complete amazement that I did not know that 25 years later I’d be standing in his office under his ministry. I was shocked to see him sitting and weeping at what I told him I’d gone through in my life. He wasn’t exactly the kind of person I ever expected to see crying, and especially over my testimony.

I didn’t know at that time that I’d never get to sit under his ministry for long. I had recently left the U.S. Marine Corps after 13 years of honorable service, more or less forced out by forces unseen which I did not understand and I am only now coming to comprehend the depths at which God had his hands in it all. I had married, moved out of state to a place I had never been before to seek work in my career fields of public affairs or visual information. I’d been a writer and photographer for a military newspaper for my last six years and run photo and visual information lab. I also had a strong IT support background in communications technology, so despite the Marine Corps’ “up or out” policy, I was feeling good about my career direction and options.

Unfortunately, within weeks of arriving in a state where I had never lived and had only vacationed a handful of times, a cataclysmic storm of events hit me from every angle as God uprooted me and took me through hell on earth for 3 years. For awhile I reeled to and fro as a massive storm battered my life and I staggered like a drunken man and was at wit’s end as the devil brought everything he could possibly bear against me in my life and walk in an unparalleled attempt to bring me down, sink me and silence me forever. I’ve never known anyone in modern Pentecost to have gone through exactly what I had to go through, although I’ve since met friends who told me things that they faced…then thanked God that they hadn’t been in my situation. Others told me they wished God had been as active and vocal as he was in my situation when they were going through their storm. In the words of my best friend, a PAW preacher in the Chicago area who once sat on the pews and worked the altars with me at my mentor’s church in NC years ago…God was building a testimony in me and for me about his power and restoration.

I’ve learned since then that when God is building a testimony in your life, it often turns into a testimony against someone else, even those people you don’t want a testimony built in memorial against them. God keeps good records. Saddest of all is when you have to fall broken, as in the case of King David, when someone you walked in company to the house of God with turns on you and lifts up their hand against you.

It’s one thing to face something simple and pray and have God answer you, but it’s something entirely different to have the devil come roaring in like a flood or like some great prize-fighter, pummeling you and hammering you back and back until you are on the ropes, clinging on for dear life, unable to cover your face and body as blow after bloody blow rains down on you…only to have God step into the ring and start landing power punches in return for every single attack, taking your enemy’s best shots and breaking the his power, and crushing him like powder.

I stood for a time, not knowing what to do and what way to go, so I just put my nose to the grindstone and worked. I became a pastor’s right hand man, carrying the burden of a home missions work. You’d be surprised how much God talks to you when you stop worrying about where God is taking you and just take on the call to be second and be a minister’s armor bearer. Just as every ship does when a great storm moves in, I headed for a safe-haven, the first friendly port I could find.

After years of intercession, days on end of long hours and entire nights spent in a closet of prayer weeping and months of fasting and seeking God’s face in his word, the storm was over. I’d lost my home, two jobs, a car, most of my possessions; but most devastating I had lost my wife, my favorite pastor and my precious children. My life was a shambles physically, my friends in the church had forsaken me, obviously feeling that anyone that endured such a storm was obviously being judged and destroyed by God for some hidden, un-repented sin. (Trust me, I’ve heard it all.) To add insult to injury, the minister I looked up to the most turned his back on me, and as I found out a few months ago is still telling anyone that inquires of me that I’m either a reprobate or listening to the devil…so much for childhood heroes!

When the storm cleared, God had brought me to another state, provided me a job making three times what I had ever made in my life, provided me a home to live in for 2 years at less than half the market price in one of the most expensive areas in America, and dropped me into a church with a pastor who has preached around the world and operated in the gifts of the Spirit on a level that rivaled many of the mentors I had sat under in my youth.

When church friends in the city where I weathered the beginning of my storm rose up and angrily declared that God did not send me to the area I am in now, God answered with a tongues and interpretation by my pastor’s wife on the week that I returned, stating I had been brought there for a purpose. The following month the Spirit of prophecy hit my pastor in the pulpit. I knew exactly when it hit him and I knew it was for me. He looked back over the congregation directly at me and began to speak to me about my situation and tell me the storm was over, the darkness was ending and my children were coming home. After service he pulled me aside and told me that the word he gave was specifically for me. I was the only one there whose children were not at home and again God was very specific.

In my storm, I learned something about mantles. Mantles were a distinguishing garment in the Bible. They were a garment that could shelter and protect from cold, rain, and the elements in general. Jael covered Sisera with a mantle in Judges 4:18. The mantle was also symbolic of ministry, as we see many of the prophets such as Samuel, wore one (1 Samuel 15:27) and when the witch of Endor described Samuel to Saul he recognized him because of his mantle.

And fifty men of the sons of the prophets went, and stood to view afar off: and they two stood by Jordan. And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and thither, so that they two went over on dry ground. And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so. And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces. He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood by the bank of Jordan; And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the LORD God of Elijah? and when he also had smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over. And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. 2 Kings 2:7-15

Elijah presented the most symbolic use of a mantle in the Bible when he wrapped his face in his mantle as he stepped out of his cave to speak with God, and when he later cast it on the young man, Elisha, as he plowed with his father’s oxen in 1 Kings 19:13-19, and he rose and followed him in one of the most powerful calls to ministry and a rite of passage seen in the scriptures. I often wondered about how Elisha would not leave Elijah’s side, even when the sons of the prophets asked him if he knew his master would be departing that day. There is no communication listed between Elijah and Elisha documented in scripture, yet Elisha knew. I also believe that the answer to this is held in scriptures, although not mentioned in the verse above.

Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. Amos 3:7

Having read the Bible through many times, and having studied the book of Acts and the many miracles and wonders performed by the prophets of old, I now look on world events and the oneness movement as a whole and I wonder and I ask myself…How many mantles are lying in the dust out there? Somewhere out there in the realm of the spirit, there are mantles of ministry hung up and in disuse, lying dormant, fallen from the shoulders of men who gave their all to the ministry. Somewhere, somehow, someone failed to toss their mantle of ministry onto another generation…and I’m not talking about taking your church’s favorite son into the board room for a license. I’m talking about those men and women of God so overcome by a burden for their generation that they fall on their faces in a prayer room and get a hold on the horns of the altar until an anointing is birthed in their lives and their spirits, until every time they speak men and women fall under the power of the anointing of God on them.

Don’t tell me we have anyone remotely like the old pioneers of Pentecost who could step into a pulpit and have grown men and women break into tears and run to the altar before they even finished their sermon. We are more swamped with the day to day grind of pastoring, politics, programs…or worse, intent on being professional, a polished politician jockeying for position in a district office, or becoming the next great conference speaker.

We have to get past the feeling of aversion that grips us when we hear the wailing rising from the prayer rooms. The feeling we are feeling is death; death to self, death to flesh, death to this world, death to the ordinances and rules and regulations that man has tried to pass off as doctrine for nearly 60 years. There comes a time in our prayer and intercessions that we have to pick up the mantle of the intercessor and the mantle of ministry and let the fringe doctrines die that we carried with us from the denominational churches our forefathers attended before God called them out. Shed the chaff and become fully Apostolic in doctrine, methods, practice…and preaching.

Pick up the mantle.