And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?
And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them. It was not Peter who spoke this, as we should have expected, but those "sons of thunder" (Mark 3:17), who afterward would have all the highest honours of the Kingdom to themselves, and the younger of whom had been rebuked already for his exclusiveness (Luke 9:49-50). Yet this was "the disciple whom Jesus Loved," while the other willingly drank of His Lord's bitter cup. (See the notes at Mark 10:38-40, and at Acts 12:2.) And that same fiery zeal, in a mellowed and hallowed form, in the beloved disciple, we find kindling up-in view of deadly error and ecclesiastical presumption-in 2 John 1:10, and 3 John 1:10,
Even as Elias did? - a plausible precedent, and the more so, perhaps, as it also occurred in Samaria (2 Kings 1:10-12).