Note: this subject has become more multi-faceted than I originally considered. I’m writing it by studied installments, and not always chronologically, my usual procedure in multi-part blogs. Thus, in this portion, more background information on Elijah’s flight.
According to I Kings 17:1, God called Elijah to confront King Ahab with a prophecy of drought: “There will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word”. The “few years” were 3 ½ according to Jesus Luke 4:25 and James 5:17. That claim put Jehovah on a collision course with Baal, the god of Ahab and Jezebel. For they, among many heathen, considered Baal the god of agricultural fertility, commander of rain clouds that watered the land at necessary intervals and the deity who rode a thunderstorm like a charioteer his steeds. Either Jehovah or Baal had to be true, but not both. If rain fell during the 3 ½ years Elijah predicted drought, Jehovah lost. If no rain fell during that time, Jehovah won. To protect his prophet during the drought, God sequestered him from further contact in Israel. He first hid him within Israel, fed by ravens. Then, when water failed in the Kerith Ravine, ordered him to a foreign land to be fed by a Gentile widow I Kings 17:1-24. (That period is itself worthy of development, but not for this blog.) At the end of the 3 ½ years God sent Elijah back to Israel to once again confront the King. (Passing by their initial encounter, which I’ll develop later in the blog), Elijah challenged Ahab to a contest between Jehovah and Baal—to be held publicly in the daylight on Mt. Carmel, in full view of all those assembled, including the king and 850 prophets of his wife’s religions. (Obviously Jezebel wouldn’t deign to attend.) As my friend Bob Shaw used to say, “long story short”, Elijah went from an outsider in Israel preaching Jehovah, to a national figure as Jehovah’s appointed prophet. (And, by the way, as the epitome of the prophetic class Matthew 17:1-4.) But let us see in this event God’s compassion for his misled people and his warning to the liars misleading them. First, predicting a 3 ½ year drought that threatened life in Israel, and ending it only at Elijah’s command. Only if Elijah could again begin the rain stopped at his command would he be God’s TRUE prophet. That’s essential to understanding God’s powerful display at Carmel. Second, Elijah gave Baal’s prophets the chance to derisively upstage him by giving them priority in their appeal. It offered the incontrovertible way to prove the TRUE GOD from the satanic impersonator. If Baal answered, and had fire fall on his bull, and Elijah then had greater fire fall from Jehovah, on a much-more difficult altar, devotees of the heathen god could claim victory by not being entirely defeated. After all, many heathen nations believed in many gods for the very reason that they could never be sure a greater god didn’t exist Acts 17:22-23. They counted any success by their chosen deity enough proof of his existence. Read in I Kings 18:25-29 the account of their efforts to recruit Baal’s intervention and achieved NOTHING. Then read I Kings 18:30-37 and see how amply difficult Elijah made it for Jehovah to prove himself. And achieved far more than needed to prove his complete authority. That didn’t end God’s proof of himself and of Elijah as his prophet. That came in two ways. First, in a furious thunderstorm (assumed) that formed from a cloud in the Mediterranean the size of a man’s hand. Second, in empowering his prophet to out-run the king’s horse-powered chariot all the way to Jezreel, some 25 miles away. HOORAY for God. God in great mercy gave proof of himself to the Israelites that NO ONE could DENY. And a warning to anyone rejecting him that they were satanically possessed. Which even apostate Ahab may have escaped, see I Kings 21:27-29, but which worse-than-apostate Jezebel didn’t. End Part III
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