Not in the Fire

".... was not in the fire" of events in mount Horeb 1 Kings 19

How many times have we looked at someone or something and thought in our hearts that this must be it but it eventually turned not to be? You don't have to amswer that.
Elijah had good reason to expect to see or hear from God.
It was God who told him to come to the mountain. It was a clear cut direction and the direction came as a result of a copnversation held weeks back. He was fleeing and hiding from Jezebel when God approached him. He told the Lord his own version of the story and his thoughts about it and God as if saying that they should hold this conversation in a more condusive environment, told him to get to a mountain.

He had angelic encounter along the way. This would have further butteressed the first point. First the discussion and secondly an angel met him along the way. The angel actually roused him from sleep, indicating or implying that he was being watched over as he headed towards the point of rendevous.

He ate angel's food. Along the way, after being roused up, he was more or less served a meal in bed. He was been givem first class service all the way by spiritual beings as he was ushered on the meet The Spirit and creator of all beings. It won't be too far fetched if he imagined himself from that moment on being treated like royalty along his journey. He could have been chauffer driven in chariots of gold in the midst of an entourage and as he got to the mountains, angellic beings would line the streets and throw their robes and palm fronds on the ground as he glided by towards the majestic throne room of The Almighty.

He received miraculous strength. Who would go forty days without food and with strength and not imagine that God Himself will be waiting at the base of that mountain to lead him on to some private room to continue the discussion?
But Elijah got to the mountain. The ground shook, the wind blew and there was fire, God was in neither. Samuel saw Eliab and rose to pour the oil on his head but God was not in the fire. He looked the part and six more men of the stock of Jesse passed by, everyone of them "kings" but God was upon neither, God was not in the fire. Saul waited and waited and when he saw that men were scattering, he decided to do the sacrifice himself, God was not in the scattering, God was not in the fire.
After all this years, we still walk by sight yet God is not in the fire. We still look and judge by what we see but God is not in the fire. We say if its God then it must feel and look a certain way but God is not in the fire. This is sum of the matter: God is not in the fire.

The Expectations of Jonathan: How it Works

Quotes are paraphrased by me and may not necessarily reflect what is found verbatim. They are only meant to give an idea of what's there as it reflects what we want to share.

"..and I will be next to thee, and Jonathan went to his house, but David stayed in the woods" Jonathan

Two Principles
In every achievement in life, there are people who play various critical roles. All of these roles can be summed up in two principles; the partakers principle and the bystanders principle.
With the partaker's principle, those that fall under it are those who one way or the other, contributed directly to the aforementioned achievement. They are people who took part in not just you being where you are right now but were with you getting there.

"It is you who have followed me in all my sufferings...." Jesus
"When I sit in glory, you shall sit in twelve thrones judging Isreal" Jesus

Those that partake in that achievement, share in the glory.
The eighty men of David, indeed the whole six hundred of them had more right to partake in David's glorification ie enthronement than Jonathan.
They were partakers of his journey to the point of enthronement.

But there are those who fall under the bystander principle. These are those who are side spectators and were either passive or active spectators. These may also translate to either have a negative or 'positive' influence.

The passive bystanders don't lift a finger when it matters. They are just onlookers and people who at best can only relate an event even more accurately than most because as it were, they were there from the beginning.
"The Lord had done great things for them"
These are the passive spectators who can tell anyone who cares to listen how these people were before the Lord did great things for them. They were familiar with the state of those people before God lifted them up. They were passivie and did not really contribute anything negative or otherwise. They were just watchers.

Active Bystanders
"And when they heard that we had built the wall.....they were less than nothing ...."
the player haters during the time of Nehemiah

These were active bystanders in the negative sense because they did their best to hinder the glory of God from shining forth. They actively pursued after their failure but didn't succeed. Active bystanders don't contribute any positive thing to the cause. Rather, they interfere and may even derail the whole issue if care is not taken.

"If God were to open the windows of heaven, can these things be?" The counsellor that had the ears of the king.

Here was a man who had the ears of the king. Here he was using his position to disuade or discourage the heart of the king from believing.

The Reward of the Bystander
"You shall see it with your eyes but shall not taste of it"
The reward of the active or passive bystander is different from the active or passive partaker.
Jonathan with all his words was not a partaker as such. The expectations of Jonathan was sadly misplaced. And there are bystanders who talk like partakers and make a show of being partakers.

Your Position
The spiritual thing about this is that just as it is not your place to claim that you are either an active or passive partaker, it is also not your place to determine who a bystander or partaker is. Now it is your place to give honor to whom it is due. That is, there are those who visibly did things and should be acknowledged for what they did. But the spiritual reality is that those that walk under one principle or the other one will receive their just reward and it is not yours to give. So even of you say that so and so did so much good(or so much evil) to you in getting you to the place you are now, the real reward that will come to them is totally aside from your acknowledgement and will surely find its way home because it is what they sowed in the spiritual that would eventually manifest in the physical. Jonathan's 'prophecy' about David's enthronement came to pass but the most critical part was missing because he was not part of it. Water will find its level.
Now does this mean that you should see evil and call it good or draw it near you because you don't really know whether what you are calling evil is good? No! Evil is evil and you shall know them by their fruits.
"I will not allow any wicked thing to stand before me" somewhere in the Psalms

"If the good man of the house knew when the thief...he would not have allowed his house to be broken into" Jesus

Act in accordance with what is revealed but acknowledge everyone that visibly contributed to your achievement. The reward doesn't come from you, it comes from what they have sown in secret and not what is seen publicly that your are now acknowledging. If someone has helped you(by all visible standards), then acknowledging and even rewarding him if it's in your power to is all good and proper.

"When thou doesth good, don't do good to....lest they repay you" Jesus

So if it's in your power to repay, then don't hold back.

The partaker/bystander principle follows after everyone when it comes to their contribution to an achievement in the real sense of the word because that which they have sown will find them out inspite of what is apparent to all. It is the work of their hands that finds them out. If that man who had the kings ears had gone to hide in shame or had acknowledged the supremacy of God, he may not have died. But he still went on to find relevance in something he did not partake in, in something he chose to be a bystander on and he paid the ultimate price for it. Bystanders who force there way into partaking eventually pay the price of humiliation or worse. There are people who think that as long as some people don't know how they were just bystanders, that they can stand side by side with you as partakers. They fool themselves and are actually walking on dangerous ground. Haman was an active bystander in the upliftment of Mordecai and he too payed the ultimate price at various levels. Don't fret with those you think shouldn't be on your train. If they did visible wrong, then you have the responsibility to address them as or with such and deal with that issue squarely.

"But it was you o my friend, we used to walk to the house of the Lord together...take sweet counsel together"
"If it were my enemy, I would have hid myself from him"

Address the issue and take the expected action when it is evidently seen. But as for the rest, there works will find them out and they won't enter into a place that is not there's. And them doing so would only translate to certain destruction because the scripture cannot be broken. Thank you

The Milk, The Honey and The War

"And it shall be on the day when ye shall pass over Jordan unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee......when thou art passed over, that thou mayest go unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, a land that floweth with milk and honey; as the Lord thy God hath promised thee" Deut. 27: 2&3
Do not allow the milk and honey to becloud your mind from the reality of the war you must need go through. It would have been very easy to take the fulfilment of the promise as so much as a time of celebration that the sobering reality of the war to come would be entirely missed.
The first time they turned their backs from the promise was simply because the saw giants living in the land. They could not connect the dotted lines; there are giants (to conquer) waiting at the entrance of every promise. This is probably why the events that led to them crossing the Jordan, and that occurred when they were about doing so were sombre issues just like the case of the instruction to build an alter after crossing and the curse and blessings from the mountains. It was as if God wanted their feet to be on the ground even while what they had been anticipating all their lives was about taking place.
This is very instructive because every crossing of the Jordan in our walk with God does not just talk about the fulfilment of a promise as it has to do with milk and honey, but it also guarantees a war. Your mind could be so set on the milk and honey that it is caught unawares by the war and the offence this would create could make one loose the promise or become enslaved in the land of promise.
If you don't look to the battles that comes with the promise and fulfilment of wealth in your life, that wealth could end up enslaving you, having fallen victim to the battle. This is a categorical statement; there is no fulfilment of a promise that doesn't come with its own war i.e the war comes hand in hand with the promise. To enjoy that promise, you must have victory in the war. To have victory in the war, you must fight with respect to instructions.
The reality of events in the old testament still continues now. The promise has been there for long and its now being fulfilled. Don't focus on it; be ready for the war.
"If riches increase, set not your heart on them" somewhere in the Psalms
Be ready for the war. The war is actually the first thing that meets you while the fulfilled promise is the first consciousness that you have. So they crossed the Jordan as promised but came to the plains of Jericho, it was war already. Look out for the war, it's there. The conflict starts from our own members jumping for attention and wanting to binge on the promise. Don't give in to them, it's the war first and you would need a war/battle plan just like Joshua.
God will always prepare you for the war because He knows that it's the war that will determine the direction of the promise or how the promise will affect your life. You will come into your land of milk and honey but never forget the war.

The Reality of Hell

'I just don't see how a loving God will send His creation to a place called hell' the common thought of the illogically minded

God is love. Jesus is love. What is 'love'?
"I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father except by me" Jesus.
This same Jesus said of hell "...where the worms dieth not..."
This same Jesus talked about hell and judgement. Encountered a rather interesting person who asserted that he didn't believe that the whole of the bible is the word of God. He then went on to specifically mention the 'old testament' as being the one he was was referring to in a particular. He also separated the 'new testament', dividing the gospels from the epistles(he had some issues with Paul).
Now after extolling the words and person of Christ, he then went on to run his own version of the quote above, of how God can not and will not 'condemn' of 'judge' anyone or consign them to such a place as hell.
So we went into a discourse. The first thing was to start from the partitioning of the scripture and selecting one portion as being more 'authentic' than the other.
If some part of the scripture is not 'authentic', how can you say for certain that its the words of Christ that you seem to approve of that is the one or portion that is authentic?
And on the matter of hell and judgement, Christ talked about them clearly. So where does that stand in the scheme of things seeing that he underscored there reality.
He then went on to dispute some of the words 'attributed' to Christ(!). So in effect, every thing that you approve or that agrees with your own contraption of 'love' that Christ talked and 'supported' are the ones you agree with but those He spoke of that contradicted your own perception and belief must have been 'attributed' to Him by someone who added it there.
So what you are actually following is a Christ and a God that is of your own design.
"But if someone preaches another Jesus...." Paul
If there is light then should there be 'darkness'? Even matter has anti-matter or does not science agree with the idea of a balance? Or should there not be a reciprocal, an antagonist? Our humanity teaches and shows us contradictions and opposites yet there are those who don't believe in the reality of hell.