A new scene is called to our attention. Instead of returning to Carmel, Elisha goes to Gilgal. There the Spirit of Christ represented by the prophet joins the sons of the prophets again. For them it is a matter of collective blessing. The remnant cannot be blessed except in gathering at the place of circumcision, of repentance, and of self-judgment.
“There was a famine in the land.” While the land of Israel lay under the weight of this calamity, type of the future tribulation, the feeble remnant finds what is necessary for its subsistence at this place, in standing before Elisha. Out of this place, far from this person, they would be without resource, even as others. Repentance and having Christ with them in the Spirit will then suffice the faithful, whatever may be their own penury and the ruin that surrounds them. They find sufficient nourishment in the “great pot” of the prophet who will not measure out their means of existence stingily. But one of them, in order to increase the group’s resources, gathers a lapful of fruit which he believes will be useful to all. This fruit, gathered by the man in his ignorance, brings “death in the pot:’ All their food is poisoned, and thus they find themselves reduced to the same extremity as the people. This poor remnant must feel the power of the death that threatens them and which is a result of their working and lack of discernment. What could they add to Elisha’s food? If the fields of Israel were not producing wheat, they were by contrast producing poison in abundance. This is all the fruit that the reign of the apostate king, the Man of Sin of the last days, will be able to procure for them, and all the fruit, on the other hand, that their flesh will be able to gather.
Elisha said: “Then bring meal. And he cast it into the pot.” Meal, the perfect humanity of Christ, is that which renders the pottage healthful. All the works of the flesh can but make of it a deadly food. Hardly had they turned to the prophet than the remedy is found. One man alone can save them and bring the remedy for the condition. They sense this, and their first thought when they are under the power of death is of the man of God. They cry unto him “out of the depths.” “If thou, Jah, shouldest mark iniquities, Lord, who shall stand?” They wait upon him; “With Jehovah there is loving-kindness.” Gathered in His presence, the perfection of His humanity is their only safeguard and even becomes their food. In His holy person He annuls all the harmful results of man mixing himself into the work of God. Elisha, Christ in the Spirit with them, opens to them a source of deliverance by the knowledge of what He, as Man upon earth, is for those who take hold of Him by faith. “There was no harm in the pot.” “Pour out for the people, that they may eat.”