Who are these seven thousand men whom God so comfortably named—but whom Elijah apparently didn’t know existed—who refused to bow in worship to Baal? After God told Elijah of them, why didn’t Elijah look them up and teach them more fully? Why, despite God’s crucial use of them in His rebuke to Elijah, do we not see them again in the inspired record of Scripture till Paul introduces them to us in the eleventh chapter of Romans? Why did Paul introduce them in this context? What lesson did he intend by their appearance in his writings?

     Much of the confusion surrounding these people grows out of hasty surveys of the historical narrative books of the Old Testament. The collective books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles narrate the major events in the history of the Jewish people in the Old Testament era. As you read these passages, be sure to take great care to locate the geographic region where each prophet taught and worked. Often—in fact most of the time—in these books the scene constantly shifts between the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom. Unless you locate the audience to whom God sent each prophet, you will not fully grasp the significance of the prophet’s message, either in these historical books or in the later prophetic books that make up the prophetic section of the Old Testament. God sent Elijah to the Northern Kingdom. His testimony was to them. Their entrenched sin and refusal to turn from those sins and return to God and to the true worship of Jehovah in Jerusalem explains Elijah’s frustration and discouragement. Nevertheless he is God’s man who was sent to voice God’s warnings and encouragement to return to the true way.

     This week we will examine the spiritual significance of the seven thousand and at least a major logical reason that Paul introduced them at this point in his Romans letter. They exemplify the incredible—though at times invisible to us—work of God in the hearts of His regenerate children. Elijah, like some in our own time, thought God’s grace was rather narrow and limited. He thought that he alone was God’s one and only option to perpetuate the voice of God’s truth in the Northern Kingdom. In his bruised pride Elijah seems to ignore the hundred prophets that Obadiah hid in two caves, a fact that our prophet likely knew if he engaged in any kind of interaction with Obadiah at all. God further humbles Elijah’s pride by telling the discouraged prophet that he is not at all God’s one and only option; God has reserved seven thousand men who refused to bow in worship to Baal. Imagine Elijah’s reaction to this news. We would think the prophet would have jumped for joy and ran at breakneck speed to find these seven thousand. However, Scripture disappoints such an expectation. Elijah continues his work as if these seven thousand men never existed. Instead of looking for these men, Elijah returns to the Northern Kingdom and settles for some time in the home of a destitute widow with one son. Could this woman and/or her son have been one of the seven thousand? Scripture does not say. We are left to indulge our unsanctified imagination, something that sanctification rather discourages.

     I believe Paul’s use of this Old Testament example at this precise point in time serves as a powerful affirmation to Paul’s development of the effect of God’s Law written in the heart of His regenerate elect children, a work that Paul described in the tenth chapter of Romans as the “…righteousness of faith…” speaking in the heart and instructing us to embrace a specific and highly respectful view of God and His powerful work. I recall talking with a man many years ago who grew up in a devoted Roman Catholic home. At the tender age of seven this young boy was told by a priest to “confess” his sins to him. This young boy boldly resisted and told the priest, “When I get ready to confess my sins, I’ll confess them to God, not to you.” Where did this seven year old boy learn such an idea? Where did his boldness against what he had been taught all of his tender life come from? Paul’s powerful teaching on the witness of faith, the testimony of God’s Law in the heart, explains many such amazing events in the experience of God’s children. Divine instruction in the heart does not eliminate the role of the gospel to refine and to further teach God’s regenerate elect children. In fact this divine instruction actually becomes the preparation of the heart to receive the testimony of the gospel. We should never overlook the power of God’s personal teaching of His own children.

God bless,
Joe Holder

Significance of the Seven Thousand

"I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. (Romans 11:1-5)"

     As noted in our last study, we often brush over the seven thousand unnamed and otherwise not described men whom God assured Elijah He had reserved, men who, according to God’s testimony had not bowed in worship to Baal. The mystery that we seldom acknowledge, much less confront or seek to resolve, surfaces when we realize that these seven thousand men never appear again in the historical record. One would think that Elijah would have immediately sought them out and instructed them more fully. At times we attempt to associate them with faithful believers, even comparing them with the providentially preserved faithful believers in the Lord’s church across the centuries. Factually, both from the historical record in the Old Testament and from Paul’s use of them in this passage, we cannot make such a connection. Why? The answer is simple if we take the time to consider the historical setting in the Northern Kingdom during Elijah’s lifetime. Based on the succession of kings in the Northern Kingdom, it is likely that Elijah lived in the ninth century BC.(1) The seven thousand named and known by God never appear in subsequent Old Testament historical narrative. We do not encounter them again till Paul introduces them to us in our study passage. While these people fail on multiple points to clearly depict God’s faithful followers in a preserved church across the centuries, they precisely depict the logical and Biblical description of God’s regenerate children who, although not tutored in the details of the gospel, nevertheless respond to the “voice of faith” and her testimony to their hearts, a beautiful example of the effects of God’s Law written in the heart that makes a moral distinction in a regenerate person’s conduct. We may suggest that Elijah should have immediately sought them out and taught them more fully, but the fact of Scripture simply will not support this point. Based on the testimony of Scripture, Elijah never made contact with them in any way. We only know of their existence by God’s testimony of them in Scripture to Elijah.

     “What was the prevalent religious scene in the Northern Kingdom as Elijah entered the scene and confronted the wickedness of the Northern Kingdom under Ahab? The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia offers the following overview:

     In Elijah’s day the religious life of the northern kingdom was in crisis. The political policies of Omri had tended toward an amalgamation of Israel with the Canaanite enclaves remaining in the land. Ahab carried his father’s policies even farther. Spurred on by the haughty and strong-willed Jezebel, a devotee of the Tyrian Baal Melqart and his consort Asherah/Astarte (Jezebel’s father was Ethbaal king of Sidon, who was, or had been, a priest of Astarte; cf. Josephus Cap i.18), Ahab established the cult of Baal and Asherah in his capital city of Samaria (1 Ki. 17:32f.). The large number of Baal and Asherah prophets maintained under Jezebel’s sponsorship at court (18:19), and her brazen attempt to purge the realm of the prophets of Yahweh (v. 13), give striking evidence of her powerful influence. Ahab, though he gave his children Yahwist names (Azariah, Jehoram, Athaliah), apparently acquiesced in her designs. Elijah’s prophetic ministry is presented as Yahweh’s response to this crisis.(2)

     Based on Elijah’s presence, the record of Obadiah hiding the hundred prophets, and God’s isolated reference to the seven thousand who had not bowed in worship to Baal, clearly there were people in the Northern Kingdom who had varying degrees of knowledge and/or conviction that the Ahab-Jezebel course was not God’s way, and they refused to follow it.

     During this era the Southern Kingdom was far from spotless in their religious conduct, but they did maintain the central core of true worship with the Ark of the Covenant in Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem and with Levites continuing to minister in the temple according to God’s Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. If we find any corollary to true and faithful worship during this era of Old Testament history, it is categorically not in the Northern Kingdom. It is rather in Jerusalem. The unfolding drama in the north serves as a remarkable example of God’s forbearance and longsuffering, sending one prophet after another to call the rebellious Northern Kingdom back to its role as a faithful part of the Kingdom of God with true worship in the temple of Solomon with Levitical priests ministering according to God’s commandments.

     So what are we to make of these seven thousand men? Why did Elijah not seek them out and teach them more fully? Further, why, in this unique context of the Roman letter, did Paul introduce them as he deals with a group of unbelieving Jews for whom he grieves and prays?

     The most sensible answer to these questions is this. Paul appears in the first century era, particularly in his repeated efforts to recover these people as he grieves for them, prays for them, and interacts with them, often at grave risk to his own life, as the counterpart of Elijah in the Northern Kingdom. The Jews with whom he interacts, and for whom he grieves and prays, become the counterpart of the seven thousand. They have not abandoned their Jewish roots and faith, but they also have not “…submitted themselves to the righteousness of God…” in Christ Jesus, the Lord of glory, God Incarnate. They are God’s elect and born-again children, no less than the seven thousand in the Northern Kingdom were, but they also have not submitted to God’s revealed way of true worship in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

     It is altogether possible—perhaps even likely—that the seven thousand in Elijah’s day were not a closely nit band of people who gathered in collective public worship, but were rather individual regenerate elect people scattered across the Northern Kingdom, but following God’s testimony (Could we not say they followed the testimony of the “righteousness of faith” speaking to them?) in their hearts that shouted out the abomination with which God viewed the prevalent Baal worship of their day? I do not offer this explanation as absolute, but I do suggest that it provides a greater logical corollary than any other explanation that I have encountered.

     I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. This explanation of the seven thousand is affirmed by Paul’s opening question and decisive answer. Despite the obvious problems in the culture and the lack of public visibility, God has not—and will not—forsaken His chosen people. His Law, written in their hearts, will not always lead them to the doctrines of grace or to a church that preaches those doctrines, but it will make its influence known to them and will strongly influence them to godly conduct that may never manifest them to the Elijahs of their day. However, God continues to remind the Elijahs who are jealous of His glory that He, not they, preserves His chosen people, and He, not they, “…knoweth them that are his….” (2 Timothy 2:19)

     Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. We better honor our God and serve our calling to join Paul in this confession than to errantly and arrogantly appoint ourselves as “certified fruit inspectors” who declare who is and who is not one of God’s elect based on our—at best—superficial and false judgment of other men’s hearts. We may not always trust our personal judgments, however sincerely made and announced, but we may safely trust God to know who and where His seven thousand are at any time or place.

     The election of God’s grace is not manifest by a flag flown over a person’s head or a brand stamped in their forehead. Their refusal to worship the populist gods of our own day may go relatively unnoticed. The Elijahs of our day may never know them or teach them, but divine grace has already reached and taught them quite well (Titus 2:11-14; notice it is the grace of God that both saves and teaches them, not the grace preacher).

     Why didn’t these seven thousand migrate to the Southern Kingdom and actively join in the only true public worship that God approved in their day? Many of their ancestors did just that over a century earlier. Why didn’t they seek out Elijah and join him in his public opposition? Scripture does not answer these questions. However, the fact that they didn’t do these things leaves them in the shroud of mystery—at least to our minds—but it does not leave them a mystery to God. They were His, and He kept them from active Baal worship by the testimony of His work in them. Paul affirms a similar truth regarding the people in his day who did not embrace his gospel, but who nevertheless responded, in ways that neither he nor others might visibly observe, to the work of divine grace within them.

…according to the election of grace. It is altogether in harmony with the bedrock truth of victorious electing and saving grace that God’s elect in a hostile world shall be touched by divine grace and shall respond to that grace, but often not in ways that we can personally observe and judge. If God shall have the final victory through grace in and for all of His elect, it is logical, reasonable, and Biblical, to conclude that the testimony of grace shall make itself known to His elect in time, whether we see that testimony or not.

     While Elijah’s courage and character leave us at times speechless, at other times he demonstrates his humanity quite clearly. He flees in fear when Jezebel threatens his life, hiding in a cave in the south till God finally confronts him and sends him back to the north. In fact God sent him back to Jezebel’s native city where He providentially preserves and feeds him for some time by means of a destitute widow. If we learn the lessons from Elijah, we shall not seek to pass hasty judgment against people whose hearts we cannot know. We shall learn that running away from our fears will never please God. We shall learn that God is able to preserve us in the very shadow of our greatest foes, and give us both light and protective care to testify of Him in the midst of His arch-enemies, just as He preserved Elijah and gave him the victory as he confronted the prophets of Baal, or as he met Ahab and personally warned him to flee the coming rain—after three and a half years of drought. God calls on us to be faithful to our calling, not to judge seven thousand whose hearts—or for that matter whose names—we cannot know. He calls us to bear our testimony to His goodness and truth, leaving the work of grace in the heart to Him who alone can both quicken dead sinners and also write His Law in their hearts so as to lead them in ways that He knows right well, though we, like Elijah, may think they do not even exist. Praise God for salvation by grace and for His reliable work in the hearts of His chosen people.

     The seven thousand example, both in its historical Old Testament setting, and especially as framed by Paul in this New Testament context, refutes two major errors that are rather common in our contemporary Christian culture.

1. Arminian theology—to borrow an analogy used by Dr. Tom Constable of Dallas Theological Seminary that I’ve used in earlier chapters of this work—“front-loads” God’s salvation with a blatant claim of salvation by works.
   
   
2. Reformed (though by no means all contemporary Reformed believers) “Lordship perseverance” or the theology of “perceived perseverance” (“I can’t give you any assurance of your salvation unless I perceive a godly witness in your conduct.”) rejects the Arminian view, but effectively “back-loads” salvation with the requirement of perceived, or at least perceivable good works and growing godliness that requires a person to become progressively more godly to the moment of death. Logically when God rebuked the prophet, Elijah had temporarily embraced this errant view. We cannot overlook the obvious. Rather than approving Elijah’s narrow view of divine grace that rejected anyone who was not serving God as he did, God rebuked Elijah for imposing his own judgment of God’s electing grace! He equally rebukes this view in our day.

     The seven thousand refute the Arminian view in that Elijah was wholly unaware of these people and thus never gave them his testimony or gave them the opportunity to “accept” God’s presumed “offer of salvation.” Yet they were saved and, based on God’s testimony, were kept personally by Him. God saved them without a preacher, an altar call, a decision card, or the “sinner’s prayer”! The seven thousand refute the pseudo-Reformed theology of “perceived perseverance” or “lordship perseverance” in that advocates of this view consistently require evidence that they personally observe before they are willing to “…give you any assurance of your salvation.” Elijah was wholly unaware of these people! He didn’t know they existed! Yet God rebuked him with the knowledge that He had reserved not a few, but seven thousand, wholly unknown to Elijah, but altogether known to God. The grace of God and the corollary witness or “speaking” of faith in the heart of God’s regenerate elect makes an unquestionable change in a person’s life, but we may not always know or discern that change, wholly refuting the “perceived perseverance” error. Scripture affirms this truth as it affirms the work of God’s grace sovereignly in the hearts of His elect children, effecting the new birth wholly by His work and without any cooperation or contribution of theirs. It equally affirms this truth in repeated testimony that the divine Law is written in the hearts of all whom God regenerates, changing their moral view and outlook. But Scripture never implies that all whom God so regenerates will encounter a preacher, join a church, or remain perceivably faithful to our personal observation and knowledge or observation. And Paul affirms the glorious truth; this is all in keeping with or a rational conclusion of “…the election of grace.”

     Occasionally—in fact rather frequently—either Arminian believers or “perceived perseverance” believers accuse those who hold to Paul’s teaching, what I believe I have presented here, as holding to “antinomianism” or otherwise being anti-evangelistic in our theology. The Biblical view of justification by faith, the righteousness which is of faith, does not discourage evangelizing the unconverted, but neither does it compel ministers to search out and preach the gospel to every unbeliever in hopes they will be converted and self-appoint themselves to the number of the elect by their own conduct. Rather, like Paul we are to carry the gospel where the Lord directs. The righteousness which is of faith, Biblical justification by faith, does not compel us to agonize about who is or isn't saved. Rather, it focuses on God who directs us. This is a far cry from antinomian opposition to evangelizing. But it is also not characterized by frantic desperation where preachers are driven to give people a chance to accept Jesus before writing them off as unsaved (as with the Arminian view) or as not one of God’s elect (as with the “perceived perseverance view).

     Secondly, the biblical view of justification by faith, the righteousness of faith “speaking” to the heart of a regenerate person, is what separates Primitive Baptists from both Arminian believers and many modern Reformed (particularly the “perceived perseverance” or “lordship salvation”) believers who hold similar views on justification by faith to their Arminian nemeses. They both teach that justification by faith is a catalyst of regeneration through a correct response to the gospel. It is based on a concept of "freewill" by Arminians and "saving faith" by those of this view in the Reformed camp.(3) But in both doctrines regeneration is intrinsically linked to a faithful reaction to the gospel. Paul's comparison of the seven thousand to his Jewish kinsmen who rejected Christ flies in the face of both Arminius' and populist Reformed explanations of justification by faith. It was Paul under the direction of the Holy Spirit, not a contemporary Primitive Baptist preacher, who categorized these people as both enemies of the gospel and elect! (Romans 11:28) Proponents of either errant view cannot reconcile this verse with their beliefs.

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Elder Joseph R Holder
Gospel Gleanings

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(1) John Walton’s Chronological and Background Charts of the Old Testament, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1978, page 42, the sequence of kings following Jeroboam and the approximate dates of their ascent are as follows:

Jeroboam, 925 BC
Nadab, 900 BC
Baasha 895 BC
Zimri, 885 BC
Omri (Ahab’s father), 881 BC
Ahab, 853 BC
Elijah lived during Ahab’s wicked reign.

(2) Bromiley, Geoffrey W., General Editor, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan:1982) page 64, under “Circumstances of His Ministry.”

(3) I gladly observe that not all leaders or teachers in the “camp” generally known as “Reformed” hold to the views here identified with “lordship salvation” or “perceived perseverance.” For example, W. G. T. Shedd, a leading and highly respected Reformed teacher in his day, though a strong believer in his Reformed church, also strongly held to immediate regeneration by the Holy Spirit apart from the instrumentality of the gospel.