Washington Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

By Doug Bing, Washington Conference president

More than double

Don’t you like it when you get double of something? Like when you go to the restaurant and they bring you more than you ordered, and you tell them about it and they say oh just keep it. Or when you by one and get one free of the same thing. We like it when some things are double. Of course, we don’t like it when we are in double trouble!

II Kings 2 tells the story of Elisha asking Elijah for a double blessing of His Spirit. Elisha was promised that if he saw Elijah being taken into heaven that he would receive that blessing.

So he stuck close to Elijah and looked to the sky until he couldn’t be seen anymore. Then Elijah’s mantel came floating down from the sky and the double blessing came to Elisha.

Isn’t it interesting that the Bible records Elisha being involved with exactly double the number of miracles that Elijah was involved with? In fact, there are quite a number of promises in scripture that promise a double blessing. Isaiah promised a double portion of joy (Isaiah 61:7). Zechariah 9:12 promised to the prisoners of war a double blessing and called them prisoners of hope.

This year has felt strange. In some ways, it has felt like we have been held either hostage or as prisoners in our own home and our country. There have been multiple deaths from the virus. There have been multiple deaths from other causes because people put off medical treatment because of virus. There has been fear and panic in some places.

Yet others have gone through much worse. Job faced much worse in that Biblical story, yet at the end he was also given double from what he had before.

I think, however, that double is not enough.

In fact, I think God actually wants to promise so much more than double. He has promised and given assurance of forgiveness in this life and the next. That is more than double.

He has promised that we are heirs in His family and that is more than double. He has promised that we will live in eternity with Him with no more death, sickness, sorrow or pain. With the average person living 72.6 years globally, it seems that eternity outpaces double by, well, an infinite amount.

Whatever you are going through right now, God has promised to provide more than double.

He has promised life with Him and those 72 years are pretty short compared to what He has in store. Jesus is coming again. He wants to have His family looking to the sky knowing that more than a double blessing is coming. He wants us fixed on the hope of His coming and from the sky will come as more than a double blessing.

May we all be walking and growing spiritually each day because of God’s infinite blessings He has promised.