Fire on Mount Carmel

A crowd stands silent on a mountainside. On one altar, an offering lies untouched after a whole day of shouting. On the other, a soaked offering sits in a trench full of water. One man lifts his face to the sky and prays. Then the fire falls.

For three years there has been no rain in Israel. Fields have turned to dust. Streams have dried up. King Ahab and his queen, Jezebel, have led the nation to worship Baal, and Jezebel has been hunting down the Lord's prophets. A palace official named Obadiah, who honours the Lord, has hidden a hundred of them in two caves, fifty in each, and kept them alive with bread and water. Now God sends the prophet Elijah to face the king. When Ahab sees him, he sneers. “Is that you, you troubler of Israel?” Elijah doesn't flinch. “I haven't troubled Israel. You have, by abandoning the Lord's commands and following the Baals.” Then he lays down a challenge. Gather all Israel on Mount Carmel, and bring the prophets of Baal.

So they come. Four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, and a great crowd of Israelites, all climbing to the heights of Carmel. Elijah stands in front of them and asks a question that cuts to the heart. “How long will you limp between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal is God, then follow him.” Nobody says a word. So Elijah sets out the test. Two bulls. Two altars. Wood, but no fire. “You call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The God who answers by fire, he is God.” And now the people find their voice. “That's a good plan.”

The prophets of Baal go first. They prepare their bull and begin to call. “O Baal, hear us!” All morning they shout. Nothing. They dance around their altar. By noon, Elijah can't resist. “Shout louder! He's a god, isn't he? Maybe he's deep in thought. Maybe he's busy, or away on a journey. Maybe he's asleep and needs waking up.” So they shout louder still, and in their desperation they even cut themselves with swords and spears, as their custom was, until the blood ran down them. The afternoon drags on. They rave until the time of the evening offering. But the Bible says it plainly. There was no voice. No one answered. No one paid attention.

Now it's Elijah's turn. “Come near to me,” he tells the people, and they crowd in. He repairs the broken-down altar of the Lord with twelve stones, one for each tribe of Israel. He digs a trench around it. He lays the wood and the offering on top. Then he does something that seems to make no sense. “Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and the wood.” They do. “Do it again.” They do. “Do it a third time.” Water soaks the wood, runs down the stones, and fills the trench. Then Elijah steps forward and prays. No shouting. No dancing. “Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.”

And the fire of the Lord falls. It burns up the offering, the wood, the stones and the dust, and licks up the water in the trench. The people fall on their faces. “The Lord, he is God! The Lord, he is God!” Elijah orders the prophets of Baal seized, and the Bible records, soberly, that Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon and killed them there. Then Elijah climbs to the top of Carmel, bows down to the ground, and puts his face between his knees. Seven times he sends his servant to look out toward the sea. Six times the servant comes back. “There's nothing.” The seventh time he says, “A little cloud is rising from the sea, as small as a man's hand.” Soon the sky grows black with cloud and wind, and a heavy rain begins to fall.

Why a contest about fire, in a land waiting for rain? Because of who Baal was believed to be. Ancient texts discovered at Ugarit, on the coast of Syria, describe Baal as the storm god, the rider of the clouds, who sends the rain that makes the crops grow. Jezebel was the daughter of the king of the Sidonians, from that same coastal world. So three years without rain, and a god who could not send even a spark, struck at the very thing Baal's worshippers trusted him for. The question on Carmel was simple. Who really sends the fire, and who really sends the rain?

Fire on Mount Carmel. You'll find it in First Kings, chapter 18. The people had been limping between two opinions, trying to keep a foot in both camps. That day God answered, and they knew. So here's the question to carry with you. Where are you limping between two opinions, and what would it look like to follow God with your whole heart?