1 Kings 18:17-40

Elijah's Challenge

1Ki 18:17-40

We have said that Ahab was a speculative idolater rather than a cruel persecutor. Jezebel acted the part of cruelty; Ahab acted the part of unbeliever and spiritual rebel generally. A proof of the probable correctness of this view is found in the incident before us. When Ahab met Elijah he did not show a spirit of cruelty. He said unto the prophet, Art thou he that troubleth Israel? He did not threaten him with the sword; he did not demand his immediate surrender and arrest; he seems rather to have looked upon Elijah with wonder, perhaps not unmixed with admiration of a figure so independent and audacious. The tone of Ahab's mind may be inferred from the kind of challenge which he accepted. It exactly suited his speculative genius. Elijah proposed a trial between himself and the idolatrous prophets, eight hundred and fifty in number, proposing that the god that answered by fire should be God. The idea instantly commended itself to Ahab as excellent. He liked the high and practical speculation. He was fond of intellectual combat, and he warmed at the notion of a holy fray. The man who could accept a notion of this kind was not cruel, or wild, or fond of human blood. Ahab was even wickedly religious; the more altars and groves the better, yea, altar upon altar, until the pile reached to heaven, and grove after grove, until the line met itself again and formed a cordon round the world. If he had started from a right centre, Ahab would have been the foremost evangelist in the ancient Church.

Let us now look at the controversy itself.

This plan was proposed by the prophet of the Lord, and not by the servants of Baal. Truth addresses a perpetual challenge to all false religions and all wicked and incompetent workers. Its challenges have heightened and broadened in tone from the first ages until now. Moses challenged the necromancers of Egypt, Elijah challenged the priests of Baal, Christ challenges the world. At first the challenge was more strictly physical, now it is intensely spiritual. What religion produces the highest and finest type of character? That is the challenging question! That sane men should prefer a display of physical power or skill to a spiritual contest is an illustration of the infancy and rudeness of their minds, not a proof of the best form of competition. Where, in Christian or in pagan lands, have we the finest men, the purest character, the most sensitive honour? Where are schools, hospitals, asylums, and charities of every kind most abundant? That Christian countries are disgraced by some of the foulest crimes possible in human life, may but show that their very foulness and atrocity never could have been so vividly seen and so cruelly felt but for the enlightenment and culture furnished by Christianity. In any other countries they would have been matters of course; in Christian lands their abomination is seen by the help of Christian light.

The appeal or challenge was forced upon the prophets of Baal; it was not spontaneously accepted by them. This should be made very clear, as it is a point apt to be overlooked. Perhaps the common impression is that Elijah challenged the prophets directly, standing face to face with them, without any medium of communication. Nothing of the kind. Elijah first challenged king Ahab, and he snatched eagerly at the sensational chance, little knowing what he was snatching at! Having spoken first to the king, Elijah spoke next to the people, demanding why they hesitated between two opinions, and insisting that they should make a choice between Jehovah and Baal. Then Elijah made his grand appeal to the people of Israel, and they answered and said, "It is well spoken;" then having secured the approval of the king and of the people, Elijah called upon the prophets to proceed to trial.

To-day Christianity appeals not to a few sectarian prophets, or a few bewildered speculators, nor to a few scientists who are wild with boy-like joy because they have found a bird's-nest, but have never seen the bird that built it; Christianity makes its appeal to the great, broad heart of human nature, to the common sufferings of the race, to the indestructible sentiments of mankind to the people first and the prophets next, and calls upon the people in all their multitudinousness to force their mumbling prophets to bring the mumble that chokes their throat to distinct and calculable articulation, and to compare the noise of charlatanism with the music of divine teaching. In Elijah's day the people said, "It is well spoken," and of Christ it is said, "The common people heard him gladly." Christianity speaks to sorrowing souls; not to the riddles which perplex a brain here and there, but to the agonies that strain and torture the universal heart.

Full opportunity has been given to men to show the worth of their idolatries and superstitions. In this controversy the prophets of Baal had the first chance. Elijah stood back that they might do their best. False religions cannot complain that they have not had field enough. And what has been the result? Invocation enough ( 1Ki 18:26 ), leaping enough upon the altar ( 1Ki 18:26 ), bleeding enough with knives and lancets ( 1Ki 18:28 ), time enough even from the morning to the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice ( 1Ki 18:29 ), and no answer! "There was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded" ( 1Ki 18:29 ). It is precisely so with every false creed, every false science, every false prophet today. There is nothing to show! All effort ends in silence. Prodigious exertions finish in prodigious emptiness. Of every teacher, other than Christian, we ask: Where are the sinners whom you have released from the torment of remorse? Where are the mourners whose tears you have dried? Where are the graves on which you have planted the flower of a happy resurrection? Where are the answers of your gods, that we may examine them, test them, and see how they came out of the fire of daily trial? Millions of men praise Christ. Sinners will stand up thick as armies, filling the valleys, thronging the hills, declaring that in Christ they have found the joy of pardon. Mourners will declare that he has dried their tears. Souls that had no life will say with thankful joy that Christ rekindled their lamp when the fierce wind had blown it out. This is the strength and glory of Christianity that living witnesses attest its power and proclaim its infinite sufficiency.

Every assault upon truth must bring mockery and death upon the assailants. Elijah mocked the prophets on Carmel and slew them at Kishon. Such is the inevitable fate of the Lord's enemies! It is right to address mocking challenges to the teachers of false doctrine, and it is right to slay them; not to slay them with the sword, but with argument, with consistency, with the zeal of inextinguishable consecration, with faith that cannot be impaired by the most insidious or the most rampant scepticism. It is the eternal necessity of things that men who oppose themselves to truth must either repent or perish.

The appeal comes to us with overwhelming force today. How long halt ye between two opinions? It cannot be that there is the slightest doubt as to the truth of Christianity. It cannot be that the understanding is in darkness. It cannot be that the argument is incomplete. It cannot be for want of open and positive and triumphant proof. It can only be because we love wickedness, and roll under our tongues the iniquity which intoxicates the senses and damns the soul.

Selected Note

The Exact Site of the Carmel Contest. Van de Velde gives a vivid delineation of the precise locality. He was, it is believed, the first traveller who identified the site of the "Burning."

"One can scarcely imagine a spot better adapted for the thousands of Israel to have stood drawn up on than the gentle slopes around. The rock shoots up in an almost perpendicular wall of more than two hundred feet in height on the side of the vale of Esdrelon. On this side, therefore, there was no room for the gazing multitude, but, on the other hand, this wall made it visible over the whole plain, and from all the surrounding heights, so that even those left behind, and who had not ascended Carmel, would still have been able to witness, at no great distance, the fire from heaven that descended on the altar.... Here we were certain the place must have been, for it is the only point of all Carmel where Elijah could have been so close to the brook Kishon as to take down thither the priests of Baal and slay them, return again to the mountain and pray for rain, all in the short space of the same afternoon. Nowhere does the Kishon run so close to Mount Carmel as just beneath El-Mohhraka (the place of the Burning).... Two hundred and fifty feet beneath the altar plateau is a vaulted and very abundant fountain. In such springs the water remains always cool, under the shade of a vaulted roof, and with no hot atmosphere to evaporate it. While all other fountains were dried up, I can well understand that there might have been found here that superabundance of water which Elijah poured so profusely over the altar."