The Lord’s fire came down and consumed the holocaust, wood, stones, and dust, and it lapped up the water in the trench. (1 Kgs. 18:39)
Can you just imagine it? It must have been a more spectacular sight than even the legendary Gun Fight at the OK Corral…well, that was only a 30 second shoot-out between three of the Earp Brothers, with back-up from brother Wyatt’s sometime sidekick Doc Holliday, and six notorious members of an outlaw gang loosely known as the Cowboys.
When the puffs of gun smoke cleared, there were three dead Cowboys, three wounded lawmen, two of the Earp brothers, along with Doc Holliday, and Wyatt Earp walking away unscathed. The remaining three of the outlaw Cowboys Gang high-tailed it out of town and lived to tell the tale. The confrontation certainly wasn’t witnessed by all the townspeople of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, sitting in bleacher seats, or standing idly around on the boardwalks waiting to see who in the altercation would best who, since none wanted to risk a taste of lead that would be flying freely. Despite its brevity, the conflagration continues to be touted as the most famous shoot out in the history of the American Old West1…but I digress.
Back to the ‘real’ topic at hand…recounted in 1 Kings 18: 16b-40, where we’re told the story of the standoff between one single, wild haired, aging prophet and the 450 prophets of Baal who enjoyed the favor of King Ahab, along with the 400 prophets of Asherah, who were favored by Queen Jezebel, and dined daily at her table. Men in a priestly garb, kept by Jezebel to promote her own special brand of idolatrous worship.
The location of this proverbial confrontation was Mount Carmel, a mountain range in northwestern Israel, that was known from ancient times as a ‘high place’ and routinely recognized as a center of idol worship.2 Identified today at a location near the Israeli port city of Haifa, in the modern-day State of Israel, it is best known as the scene of Elijah’s facing off against the false prophets of Baal, even though he was badly outnumbered with odds of 450 to 1.
Elijah had spent years haranguing and, according to King Ahab, “harassing” him(1 Kg. 18: 16b), and the people of Israel, with his call to abandon the idolatry they were practicing and return to the Living God, the God of Israel, who had set them apart – and given them the land they occupied – to serve Him, and Him alone. So, not only are there 850 pagan prophets present, but the King has called together all the people of Israel to witness this contest between the pagan Baals, and the God of Israel…the traditional God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…to determine a ‘Champion’ from the two opposing spiritual entities.
“How long will you straddle the issue? If the Lord is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him.” 1 Kgs. 18: 21.
The response of the people gathered is telling…the verse concludes with this, “The people, however, did not answer him.” Hmm…when in doubt, don’t say or do anything to commit yourself…keep your options open.
So, here it is…the full story described in detail in a mere 24 verses of Chapter 18 of 1 Kings. First, Elijah throws down the gauntlet challenging the priests of Baal to call on their gods, while he calls on the God of Israel, and the one who ignites the fire to burn up the sacrificial bull on the altar of stone, is the real, genuine god, the one the people of Israel should serve.
The Baal prophets are up first, and spend most of the day, dancing about, shouting, and cutting themselves until their blood flows, ‘…as is their custom.’ (v.28) All to no avail. Nothing happens, no sound, no answer…the sacrifice languishes on the altar of stone, untouched.
Now, it’s Elijah’s turn…and, you have to give him credit for the dramatic flare in his actions. First, he rebuilds an altar of the Lord with twelve stones, one representing each of the ‘sons of Jacob, to whom the Lord had said, “Your name shall be Israel.”’ (v. 31b) He repairs the destroyed altar of the Lord, digs a trench around it, prepares the sacrificial animal, and lays it upon the wood atop the stone altar. Then, rather oddly, he asks to have it all doused three times in several gallons of water, thoroughly soaking the sacrifice, the wood, and the altar, and filling the trench around it with water.
Now the time of accounting is at hand…before all the people gathered around to witness this, who have been there for much of the day, waiting for something to happen, and witnessing the gyrations, actions, shouts and screams, and self-harm of the 450 prophets of Baal, without any effect.
By now, late in the day, perhaps the audience were lulled into complacency, not expecting much, and maybe even questioning whether Elijah can possibly do much more than the 450 men have already done. After all, they have been shouting most of the day to rouse Baal, and it’s been a rather unspectacular performance. From the high expectation at the beginning of the day, with their senses dulled by the time it came to the hour of the evening sacrifice, those watching might have shown nothing more than a bored silence.
Then it happens…Elijah prays very simply, “Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things by your command. Answer me, Lord! Answer me, that this people may know that you, Lord, are God and that you have brought them back to their senses.” (v. 36, 37.)
Without further preamble, likely in only a fraction of the 30 second time frame of the famous shoot out, a fireball falls out of the sky totally consuming, not just the holocaust, but it is so hot it annihilates the stones, the dust and licks up the water in the trench. Now that’s power!
Can you just see it? You standing there among those people who had stood around all day waiting for something to happen…and suddenly, from no where, a fireball descends and the holocaust, altar, and everything around it is gone in a flash?
We, too, probably would have, in the next split second, joined them on their faces, declaring, in great terror, with utmost respect and fervency, ‘The Lord is God! The Lord is God!’ Like them, too, no doubt we would have meant it with everything in our being. Having witnessed this, surely nothing could have convinced us that the Lord wasn’t real and alive or that he wasn’t at work in our midst. Surely this would have settled it once and for all… the Lord is God, and He alone should be served and worshiped…through all ages to come.
Alas, what follows is all too typical. Having seen the Lord do this great and mighty miracle, proving that the Lord is truly God, in short order, those who witnessed this spectacular event once again turn their backs on Him and go back to their false gods and idol worship. Imagine!
Now, to be sure, none of us have probably witnessed the fire falling from heaven as the Israelite’s of Elijah’s day did. Still, only a few days ago, something equally spectacular was revealed to us through the ingenuity and inventive, creative power of the mind of man. Seeing the images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope that show an almost pin prick glimpse of outer space in all its glory and intricate beauty, must surely be a modern-day equivalent of witnessing to the Lord as God, Creator of the universe.
Can anyone really view the images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope3, showing a glimpse of the universe, constellations wheeling beyond our own galaxy, with the sky holding light beams that began billions of years ago, and are just reaching us now4, and believe this complexity of organization, and the delicate dance among these stars and planets that keeps them balanced in a massive holding pattern, all transpired by ‘chance’?
Science would say that, rather than chaos resulting in organization, organization is always tending to disorganization, to breaking down. How, then, can science suggest that the intricacy of the universe, and its operation, came from chaos that organized itself into balance, harmony, and the detailed clockwork timing of movement, whether of the atom or the galaxies of the universe, without positing a ‘designer’? Believing that chaos became organization and that a spark of life also came from nothing, takes more faith than to believe in a Creator God, the Lord, the Intelligent Designer who says He set the stars in place, and called each one by name. (Ps. 147:4)
Scripture also says,
When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet, you have made him a little lower than heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet…
Psalm 8: 4-6 (ESV)
So, it’s a question we might once again, today, still ask ourselves. If the Lord truly is God, who made the heavens and earth, and reigns supreme over the entire Universe, why have we turned away to follow the false gods of our day, the ‘prophetic’ voices that entice us to idolatry, and the myriad of voices that declare there is no god, and we are our own gods? Where and how do we come to leave God out of our daily lives and still believe we can attain heaven on our own efforts, or through the false, phony lies that the world tells us, saying the Lord is ‘love’ and a loving god would never consign anyone to loss of heaven or eternal suffering in a place that is devoid of his presence and love?
Maybe, as we ‘witness’ this miraculous glimpse into galaxies and universes beyond our ability to comprehend, it is time to go back and reconsider…that the Lord is God, and we should serve Him…not the machinations of man and his mind positing hypotheses that require greater faith to accept and acknowledge as being true than to trust ourselves to the Living God. (cf. Is. 48: 12-13)
(Composed: July 16, 2022 ~ Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Pray for us5)
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral
2 https://www.britannica.com/place/Mount-Carmel-mountain-ridge-Israel
3 https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages
5 https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resource/55429/our-lady-of-mount-carmel
Ending Our Life Well 