Elijah
Elijah the Tishbite, who was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind without dying (2 Kgs. 2:11), is identified by Noordzij as an eschatological type of overcomers who conquer the last enemy — death. His translation without death is for Noordzij not a historical exception but a prophetic sign: a pointer toward a category of believers who in the consummation of the ages will put on immortality. Together with Enoch, Elijah forms the biblical precedent for Paul’s triumph: “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54).
Biblical Anchoring
| Reference | Context |
|---|---|
| 2 Kgs. 2:11 | Elijah taken up in a whirlwind in a chariot of fire, without dying |
| Gen. 5:24 | Enoch walked with God and was taken — prophetic precedent for Elijah |
| 1 Cor. 15:53-54 | ”This mortal must put on immortality… Death is swallowed up in victory” |
| Rom. 7:24 | ”Who will deliver me from this body of death?” — the eschatological goal |
| John 11:25 | ”I am the resurrection and the life” — Christ as the reality to which Elijah points |
Typological Interpretation per Author
C. en A. Noordzij
In Mozes en de weg tot zoonschap (Moses and the Path to Sonship), Noordzij introduces Enoch and Elijah as a joint type of the eschatological victory over death. The starting point is Paul’s triumphant cry in 1 Cor. 15:54: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” Noordzij reads this not as a promise automatically fulfilled in every believer, but as an eschatological status actively appropriated by those who overcome death as Enoch and Elijah did before them. His typological formula is concise:1
“Death is the last enemy, which is ‘swallowed up in victory’ (1 Cor. 15:54). What happened to Enoch and Elijah was a pointer toward this.”1
The word pointer (heenwijzing) is typologically normative: Enoch and Elijah are not endpoints in themselves but signs pointing forward. Elijah’s historical translation is thus not merely a remarkable miracle in one prophet’s life, but a prophetic precedent concerning future overcomers. This fits within Noordzij’s broader eschatological framework, in which a distinguished group — the “overcomers” of the seven letters in Rev. 2-3 — is called to a measure of redemption that includes the body itself.
In De ark van Noach (The Ark of Noah), this pattern returns with a more explicit comparison between Elijah and Enoch. Elijah’s translation is read as the historical ratification of a promise that still awaits its eschatological fulfillment:
“Elijah, like Enoch, was taken up into incorruptibility without dying (1 Cor. 15:53). In him ‘the word became reality which is written: Death is swallowed up in victory’ (1 Cor. 15:54).”2
The formulation “in him the word became reality” points to partial fulfillment: in Elijah’s translation the promise was realized for one person as a prototype, but the full fulfillment awaits a class of overcomers. Noordzij strengthens this line immediately afterward in the Enoch section, where he writes that Enoch was taken “as a sign of those who will fully know Jesus as ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ (John 11:25).”2 The phrase as a sign of them is Noordzij’s explicit typological formula — it works retroactively on Elijah as well: Elijah too is a sign of those who will appropriate the victory over death in the final age.
The two types function for Noordzij as a double witness: Enoch before the flood, Elijah after the giving of the law — both speaking of the same eschatological reality, which finds its antitype in Christ as “the resurrection and the life.” Those who fully know Christ in that capacity will, like Enoch and Elijah, put on immortality without taking the ordinary path of death.
Related Types
- Related: enoch (parallel type of the overcomers; Noordzij consistently treats Enoch and Elijah together as a double witness)
- Via glossary: sonship
- Via glossary: overcomers