I love these chapters and the show-down between Ahab's Baal worshipers and Elijah's God! "How long halt ye between two opinions?" Elijah calls to the children of Israel. "If the Lord be God, follow Him: but if Baal be God, then follow him." (1 Kings 18:21)
So Elijah instructs the priests of Baal to set up an altar, and he will also set up an altar to the Lord of heaven. And the god that answers by fire, He will be God. Everyone agrees... Baal worshipers go first. For hours they dance and cry and even cut themselves as they plead for Baal to hear. He is silent. Apparently he's sleeping. Elijah eggs them on...
Finally, at the end of the day, Elijah prepares his altar to the Lord of Heaven. You would think that perhaps he might be inclined to help the Lord out a bit as he sets up the altar, but he actually goes contrary to common sense as he builds a trench around the altar and then pours water over the sacrifice (3 times) until it fills the trench. What was he thinking? That's sure not going to help a sacrifice burn by fire... that's essentially making sure it will be impossible to burn! ;-/ Yet Elijah knows what he's doing... When God answers (the God of the possible!) it will be so clear, this was a work no man could do.
So Elijah prays... and barely had he prayed when fire came from heaven and consumed the sacrifice and the wood, AND the stones (since when do stones burn), and the dust...and the water around the altar! Wow!!! And when all the people saw it, they fell down and shouted, "The Lord, He is God, the Lord He is God!"
However, despite this amazing victory, the prophets of Baal being put to death, and rain once again coming upon the land... the first threat of retaliation from the woman Jezebel, and Elijah is running for his life... Could he not trust that the same God who had just spoken by fire and worked in such a dramatic way could also intervene and save his life from this heathen woman?
Ellen White writes the following regarding this failure of faith in the life of Elijah!
"It is at the time of greatest weakness that Satan assails the soul with the fiercest temptations. It was thus that he hoped to prevail over the Son of God; for by this policy he had gained many victories over man. When the will power weakened and faith failed, then those who had stood long and valiantly for the right yielded to temptation. Moses, wearied with forty years of wandering and unbelief, lost for a moment his hold on Infinite Power. He failed just on the borders of the Promised Land. So with Elijah. He who had maintained his trust in Jehovah during the years of drought and famine, he who had stood undaunted before Ahab, he who throughout that trying day on Carmel had stood before the whole nation of Israel the sole witness to the true God, in a moment of weariness allowed the fear of death to overcome his faith in God.
And so it is today. When we are encompassed with doubt, perplexed by circumstances, or afflicted by poverty or distress, Satan seeks to shake our confidence in Jehovah. It is then that he arrays before us our mistakes and tempts us to distrust God, to question His love. He hopes to discourage the soul and break our hold on God.
Those who, standing in the forefront of the conflict, are impelled by the Holy Spirit to do a special work, will frequently feel a reaction when the pressure is removed. Despondency may shake the most heroic faith and weaken the most steadfast will. But God understands, and He still pities and loves. He reads the motives and the purposes of the heart. To wait patiently, to trust when everything looks dark, is the lesson that the leaders in God’s work need to learn. Heaven will not fail them in their day of adversity. Nothing is apparently more helpless, yet really more invincible, than the soul that feels its nothingness and relies wholly on God." (Prophets and Kings, p. 174)And yet Elijah, whose faith temporarily failed, God later took to heaven. This can give us hope in our lives today! I especially love that last sentence: Nothing is apparently more helpless, yet really more invincible, than the soul that feels its nothingness and relies wholly on God!
Tomorrow's Reading: 1 Kings 20,21 and 2 Cor. 1
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