Using the arcpy module for Arc 10 you can use the following two functions to convert a text file back to a shapefile:
#Variable that is assigned an input folder location
workspace = 'C:/folderPath'
#Variable that is assigned a string name. This will be what your exported shapefile will be called.
newLayer = 'layerName'
#Create the new Event Layer. The arguments 'x','y' and 'z' are the header names associated with your lat,lon and elevation respectively
arcpy.MakeXYEventLayer_management('textFile.csv', 'x', 'y', newLayer, '', 'z')
# Process: Feature Class To Shapefile (multiple)
arcpy.FeatureClassToShapefile_conversion('layerName', workspace)