The One True God

“Then you call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord; and the God who answers by fire, He is God…Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench.” (1 Kings 18:24, 38)

                Since the beginning of time, men have been fashioning other gods in their quest for the divine.  Today’s verses are taken from an occasion when the prophet Elijah was surrounded by hundreds of people who served other gods.  We need to be clear – the other “gods” they were serving were not really gods at all.  Their names were Baal and Asherah and they were simply figments of the pagan imagination.  And yet, that didn’t keep them from believing that their gods were real.

                At the height of Israel’s ungodliness, Elijah offered wicked King Ahab a proposition – “you call on the name of your gods, and I will call in the name of the Lord; and the God who answers by fire, He is God.”  Ahab and his wicked prophets consented.  Keep in mind, there were 450 prophets of Baal in Israel, along with 400 prophets of Asherah.  If my math is correct, Elijah was outnumbered by a margin of 850-1.  And yet, Elijah proved that a man is always in the majority when he stands with God.

                You know the rest of the story – the wicked prophets of Baal and Asherah cried out and cut themselves from dawn ‘til dusk, but their gods never answered.  Then Elijah stepped up and told those standing by to pour a massive amount of water over the sacrifice and the altar – so much that it filled a trench that was dug around the altar.  Elijah called on the Lord and the Lord answered by fire, proving once for all that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the one and only true God.  Is He the Lord of your life?