Elijah's Challenge

“Oh how I hate those prophets! And that little bald one is the worst of them all!” exclaimed Jezebel. “You would have thought that I got rid of them all a few years ago when I had them executed. But no – some fool decided to hide 100 of them in two different caves! Just wait until I find out who hid them and their days are numbered!”

As she was being gently fanned by long palm branches from the fresh date trees outlining the perimeter of the palace, Jezebel continued to address her ladies in waiting, “My husband – such an incompetent man that he is – just informed me by his servant Obadiah that Elijah still lives!” Grabbing her wrist and choking the gold and silver bracelets dangling in tandem from her hand, “Why did it have to be Elijah that still lives? King Ahab calls him the “Troubler of Israel – He real name should be “Troubler of Jezebel”. As you are well aware, I had search teams sent out not only throughout the Northern Kingdom but to other countries that surround us to try to find and kill Elijah. Yet – he lives!”

One of the servant girls hoping to gain some special favor of the Phoenician Princess shared, “I hear Obadiah is a faithful and devout follower of the Jewish God, Yahweh. He’s followed him since he was a child. He seems to have many friends that are prophets who live among the hills around Mt. Carmel.”

“The only thing that has saved Obadiah is King Ahab’s trust in him. Obadiah scouted through the whole area for springs to feed his horses so that they would not die from this lousy drought. It’s been three horrible years – and still no water! – Nothing is drinkable! The one stream that exists in this area is disgusting and filthy -- no living thing can drink water from it.”

Vainly looking at her reflection in the large brass mirror as she twisted her long dark hair into ringlets, Jezebel said to the closest attendant at her side “My own prophets of Baal will know what to do. Why should they not? I brought them with me from Phoenicia. Phoenicians are great and mighty sea farers. No navy in the region near Greece or Italy compares nor surpasses us. The Mediterranean is our Kingdom. It belongs to the Phoenicians. My father was a great King with much property and wealth through his shipping industry.”

Jezebel continues as she rotates the delicately engraved gold comb in her hand, “It is entrepreneurship that enhanced international trading and made it progress beyond the limits of what anyone has seen. Even my marriage is a financial advantage to the Northern Kingdom by joining forces with Phoenecia. I can recall many times gazing out my window in my childhood at the palace of my father. Great wooden ships with tall triangular sails would come into the harbor with all kinds of cloth, jewelry, fruit, spices, and animals. We are a great people of knowledge and culture. It was originally from my people, that the alphabet was created and linguistics perpetuated throughout the kingdom.”

As Jezebel sets down to rest her jeweled crown upon her forehead she vows with conviction, “Elijah does not know who he is dealing with!”

King Ahab is a strong and formidable man. He was 38 years old when he became the leader of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. His father had ruled for 22 years before him. He chose to live in Samaria which is located in the northern central part of Israel below the Sea of Galilee and rule the kingdom from there. Samaria is a land of exotic people with fascinating and adventurous foreign culture. It is and was everything that he had been told to run from.

When he first met Jezebel she was so exciting and so different from everyone else he had met. She was the life of the party and the desire of all his peers. She flirted openly with her jokes, body, and the way she could make you feel like the most important person in the room. (Of course, it would only last a few seconds until her attention was turned elsewhere and desperately sought by someone else.)

Jezebel was the beautiful daughter of the Phoenician King and therefore a Princess – a rebellious wild woman whose middle name should have been “Temptation”. He married her mostly out of motives of lust and greed. The union made him quite wealthy from international trading on the Mediterranean Sea and gave him status that he had tamed such a woman.

However, since that time on hindsight it is more Jezebel who has taken over and perhaps leashed him. He built temples in Samaria to her favorite god of Baal. He established a whole congregation of prophets of Baal. Sacrifices were ritually offered to this god that he had accepted and embraced from his wife’s foreign culture.

An outrageously expensive altar had been built of gold to this god. Although he knew that Yahweh, the God of his childhood, would be furious, he built a shrine in the lush green grove of olive trees to the mother goddess Asherah who promotes sexual promiscuity among her followers. She is connected to fertility and war. In other sister coastal seaports, she is commonly known as Aphrodite or Venus.

Often while walking through the main city center, he recalls the smell of the little sweet cakes that have been baked in tribute to the goddess Asherah. Due to the desire of Jezebel, wooden poles in dedication to her have been placed throughout the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Asherah is the ethereal heavenly partner to the god of Baal. Baal is the foremost vengeful god of rain, thunder, lightning and dew.

Elijah is an interesting guy who lives in the wilderness among the caves of the prophets. He is a man of intuition, wisdom and discernment. He is bold and direct. His name means, “Yahweh is God” and he is convinced of this fact. God has worked many miracles through him in his lifetime. Many have heard the story of the widow whose faith filled the oil jars for her to sell to keep her son alive. She opened up her home to him where he has stayed many times.

After leaving the Northern Kingdom after the LAST confrontation with King Ahab in Cherith near the Jordan River, God fed Elijah by ravens in the wilderness. God had told him to get out of there as fast as possible and go to the other side of the Jordan River. He has been away for three years hiding in the wilderness.

A small collection of his friends have been kept alive by his good friend Obadiah who works in the household of King Ahab. A silent follower of Yahweh, Obadiah must keep his faith to himself but by acts of kindness everyone knows that he is devout to Yahweh.

Dusting off the sand from his well worn leather sandals, Elijah senses that God wants to speak to him again. He prepares himself for worship to hear God’s voice. Kneeling and then laying prostrate before God, Elijah waits for Him to speak to his soul within the darkness of the cavern that has now become his home after so many years.

“What is it Lord? I’m listening.” Elijah says out loud in his room alone. God speaks. “Go. Present yourself to King Ahab. I’m about to make it rain in the country.”  The drought has taken its toll on everything – the plants, the animals, even the atmosphere of life among the people. He knows what it means to be obedient.

Elijah immediately sets out for the palace. He meets up with Obadiah after a long time. His friend is faithful to God too and goes directly to King Ahab in spite of the fact it might mean his life. Elijah has told him God will protect his life and Obadiah trusts that He will do so.

What’s this? It looks like King Ahab is coming out to greet him! King Ahab walking with determination has a whole court of advisors in straight file behind him trying quickly to keep in step. Ahab narrows his eyes and sets his square jaw with his scarlet robe whipping in the harsh wind cascading down from the mountains. In a derogatory voice he screeches, “Oh it’s YOU! You “Troubler of Israel!”

Elijah defiantly shouts back, “It’s not ‘I’ who has caused ‘trouble’ in Israel. But YOU and YOUR government! You’ve dumped God’s ways and commands. You run after local gods, the Baals. Now --- here’s what I want you to do. Get everyone together in Israel at Mount Carmel. Make sure that the “Special Pets” of Jezebel, the 450 prophets of the local gods, the Baals, and that the 400 prophetesses of the whore goddess Asherah are all there!”

Perturbed and disgusted, King Ahab summons everyone around in the Jezreel Valley including the Northern and Southern Kingdoms to the no-man’s land of Mount Carmel. It is a natural boundary and divider between the kingdoms. As a mountain range it is historically a strategic point for invasions and battles. No one “hangs out” here just for fun. King Ahab is furious. He vows to himself that Elijah only has a short time to live if he has anything to do with it. He is exhausted and fed up by the overwhelming conviction he is experiencing caused by the words of this obnoxious prophet.

“Conviction” that -IS-the-word. He doesn’t hate Elijah for his own sake. It is just that Elijah always knows when he is wrong and has a habit of pointing it out. He has long since left Yahweh, the God of his nation and culture to seek the pleasurable, lustful and carnal pursuits of his foreign consort and wife. Elijah creates and reminds him of the monument of his desertion.

Elijah humbly bowing in reverence to the God whom he stands before on the mountain, raises his head nobly to the people standing with eager expectation in the valley below, he sets before them the rules of the challenge:

“I’m the only prophet of God left in Israel. There are 450 prophets of Baal. Let the Baal prophets bring up two oxen. Let them pick one, butcher it, and lay it on an altar on firewood. BUT don’t ignite it. I’ll take the other oxen, cut is up and lay it on the wood. But I won’t light the fire either. Then you pray to your gods, and I’ll pray to my God. The God who answers with fire will prove to be, in fact God.”

Everyone agrees to the terms wistfully hoping that Baal will answer their request, “Good Plan. Let’s do it.”, nodding their heads in mutual agreement with each other and smirking with their skeptical arms folded across their chests.

Elijah encourages them to go first since there are so many of them. The prophets of Baal begin to pray their habitual prayers and chants. At morning break the sun blazes above them but there is not so much as a hint of wind to light the fire. They jump, dance, mourn, weep, chant some more – but nothing happens. At noon the sun reaches its highest crest and scorches them down below. “O Baal, answer us!” – but still nothing.

Elijah decides to have a little fun and mocks their efforts. He unashamedly taunts them, “Call a little louder – maybe your god has gone deaf! Maybe he’s taken a little vacation from you! Maybe he has a bigger project to work on and this one is not so important! Maybe he is off meditating to a bigger god some place else!”

Then to harass them to complete irritation he aggravatingly digs, “Maybe he’s off sleeping somewhere and just overslept!” bending over in personal pleasure and laughter with a huge belly laugh being tickled by his own joke, “Perhaps you need to wake him up!”

The desperate prophets pray louder and louder (they will never admit it, but perhaps Elijah might be right about him Baal being little deaf today). They start the cutting ritual which is very painful but in times past has created an emotional response at least among the people. They are now covered in the rusty stain of their own blood. It is past noon and it is not working.

Some are skilled in magic tricks and potions that are used in the court performances and parties. Illusions created to provoke foolish responses when all else fails. The prophets of Baal try their tricks, but nothing happens – not a whisper – not even a flicker of a response.

Elijah finally bored with the nonsense, waves his hands above his head and tells them “Enough of that! It’s my turn now!” Standing back and looking eye to eye with as many people as possible, he leans forward and speaks directly with confidence, “Come close so you can see what is going to happen.”

Picking up the discarded wood -- piece by piece --that has been disheveled from all the gymnastics and hullabaloo, Elijah carefully sets each instrument of the altar in place to prepare for worship.

He takes twelve smooth and even stones that he has collected from the valley below by the river bed. Each stone represents a tribe of Israel named after each son of Jacob whose own father was Isaac and also grandfather Abraham. It is with a stone God had shown Jacob that Israel would belong to him and that he made a covenant with him that his name would be Israel and his people would belong to Him forever.

Elijah carefully places each stone on the wooden altar of sacrifice to honor God. Taking one of the dried out branches of olive wood, he digs deeply in the surrounding dirt to make a wide trench around the altar. Laying firewood on the altar and cutting up the ox which has now been placed on the altar, he demands that four buckets of water be filled and then for the wood and ox to be soaked and drenched. He is not satisfied the first time. He soaks the altar three more times with four buckets of water --- that is a total of 12 buckets of water splurged upon the altar.

As a glorious sunset of shades of amber, crimson, gold, and orange settle on the ridge of Mount Carmel, it is time for the evening sacrifice to be offered. Elijah begins in an act of worship by praying, “O God. God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, make it known right now that You are God in Israel – that I am Your servant – and that I’m doing what I’m doing under Your orders. Answer me God! O answer me . . . and reveal – to this people that You are God -- the one and only true God. You are giving these people another chance at repentance.”

Immediately the fire of God falls from heaven, flames descend and consume the sacrificial offering of atonement. Everything is burned up. Everything is included – the wood, the stones, the dirt, and even the left over water in the trench that was not able to escape.

The crowd in surrender falls to their knees and with great conviction and humility, bow in worship. They unanimously shout “God is the True God! God is The true God!”