Today I read 1 Kings 18 which is perhaps the most funny chapter in all of the scriptures. Elijah shows himself again to King Ahab and tells him to gather all the people of Israel and all the priests of Baal. When they all arrive Elijah chastises them for being wishy-washy. He tells them that if God is God to worship Him, or if Baal is God, to worship him. So he proposes a contest. They each build an altar and put a sacrifice on it and pray to their God to send down fire and accept the sacrifice.
The priests of Baal spend all day calling to their god without success. And in a move that always makes me laugh out loud, Elijah starts to mock them. He tells them to call out louder that perhaps their god is asleep and needs to be woken up or maybe he is out on a journey. It is sometimes hard to reconcile Elijah as a prophet of God, but this is obviously ok with Heavenly Father or Elijah would not have been allowed to do it. Still, it is a very funny episode indeed.
Elijah has left no doubt that Heavenly Father is God. The way he went about that contest was masterful. We are not told if God told him to do it that way, or if Heavenly Father just honored Elijah's request for it to be that way, but either way we can know that God was pleased as He honored Elijah's request for fire from heaven. He proved without a doubt that Heavenly Father is the God in Israel. I wonder if all those people in that crowd stayed true to Heavenly Father the rest of their lives, or if like so many others they fell away once the magnitude of that miracle had worn off? How would I have reacted? I guess we'll know one day. Until tomorrow.
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