Fire on the Mountain

Read it: 1 Kings 18–19

The kingdom had split, and the northern kingdom, Israel, went from bad to worse. Then came Ahab, who “did evil in the sight of the LORD, more than all who were before him” (1 Kings 16:30). He married Jezebel, a princess from Sidon, a city on the coast to the north, and together they made Baal worship the official religion. Baal was the Canaanite storm god. People believed he sent the rain, and rain was life or death for farmers.

So when a prophet called Elijah walked into Ahab’s court, his first words were aimed straight at Baal: “there will be neither dew nor rain in these years except at my word!” (1 Kings 17:1). Elijah’s name means “my God is the LORD”. The rain stopped. For three and a half years the land dried out, and the so-called god of storms could do nothing about it.

Two opinions

When Ahab finally met Elijah again, he greeted him with, “Is that you, O troubler of Israel?” (1 Kings 18:17). Elijah threw it back: the real trouble was Ahab’s family abandoning God’s commands. Then he proposed a public showdown on Mount Carmel, a ridge running down to the Mediterranean Sea. On one side, 450 prophets of Baal. On the other, Elijah, alone.

He spoke to the gathered crowd: “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him. But if Baal is God, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). Most Israelites hadn’t completely given up on God. They just wanted Baal too, as a backup. Elijah said you can’t have both. “But the people did not answer a word.”

The test was simple. Each side would prepare a bull on an altar but light no fire. “The God who answers by fire, He is God” (1 Kings 18:24). The prophets of Baal went first. From morning until noon they shouted, “O Baal, answer us!” But “there was no sound, and no one answered” (1 Kings 18:26). Elijah began to mock them. Shout louder! “Perhaps he is deep in thought, or occupied, or on a journey. Perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened!” (1 Kings 18:27). They shouted and slashed themselves with knives until evening. Nothing.

Then Elijah rebuilt the broken-down altar of the LORD with twelve stones, one for each tribe, a reminder that the whole people still belonged to God. He dug a trench, laid out the sacrifice and had it soaked with water three times. Then he prayed, simply: “Answer me, O LORD! Answer me, so that this people will know that You, the LORD, are God, and that You have turned their hearts back again” (1 Kings 18:37).

“Then the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and it licked up the water in the trench” (1 Kings 18:38). The crowd fell on their faces: “The LORD, He is God! The LORD, He is God!” (1 Kings 18:39).

Then comes a hard verse. Elijah had the prophets of Baal seized and put to death (1 Kings 18:40). Under the covenant law Israel had sworn to, a prophet who led the nation to other gods was to be put to death (Deuteronomy 13:5). It was judgment within Israel, under that covenant, and not a pattern for Christians. When two of Jesus’ disciples later wanted to call down fire on a village that rejected them, “Jesus turned and rebuked them” (Luke 9:55).

Elijah prayed again, and a tiny cloud rose from the sea, “as small as a man’s hand”, and soon the sky turned black and heavy rain fell (1 Kings 18:44–45).

Under the broom tree

You’d expect the next chapter to show Elijah triumphant. Instead, Jezebel sent him a message promising to kill him within a day, and he ran. He fled south through Judah and on into the desert alone, sat under a broom tree, a desert shrub, and asked to die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life” (1 Kings 19:4).

One of the greatest moments of faith in the Bible is followed immediately by exhaustion, fear and despair. If you have ever crashed after a high, Elijah has been there.

Look at what God did. No lecture. He let Elijah sleep, then sent an angel with warm bread and water: “Get up and eat, or the journey will be too much for you” (1 Kings 19:7). Then He led Elijah forty days to Horeb, Mount Sinai, the very mountain where God had made His covenant with Israel.

In a cave there, God asked, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:9). Elijah poured out his complaint: Israel had abandoned God, “I am the only one left, and they are seeking my life as well” (1 Kings 19:10). Then came a mighty wind that shattered rocks, an earthquake and a fire. But God was not in them. “And after the fire came a still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). God gently corrected him. He wasn’t alone: “I have reserved seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed to Baal” (1 Kings 19:18). And God gave him new work to do, including anointing a young man named Elisha to carry on after him.

Elijah was the first of many prophets in these chapters of the story. They weren’t mainly fortune-tellers. They were God’s covenant messengers, sent again and again with the same appeal: “Turn from your wicked ways and keep My commandments” (2 Kings 17:13). The northern kingdom never really listened, and in 722 BC it fell to the Assyrian empire and its people were carried away. The southern kingdom of Judah would hear the same call.

Where Jesus is in this

The last book of the Old Testament ends with a promise: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome Day of the LORD” (Malachi 4:5). Jesus said that promise came true in John the Baptist, a fiery prophet in the desert calling people to turn back to God: “he is the Elijah who was to come” (Matthew 11:14). Elijah’s job, and John’s, was to get people ready for God Himself to come.

Then, on a mountain, Elijah himself appeared. When Jesus was transfigured and shone with glory, “two men, Moses and Elijah, began talking with Jesus. They appeared in glory and spoke about His departure, which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:30–31). The great lawgiver and the great prophet stood with Jesus and talked about His coming death. The whole Old Testament, law and prophets, was pointing to Him.

Think about it: Elijah asked, “How long will you waver between two opinions?” Is there a “backup god” in your life, something you trust alongside God just in case?

Go deeper: Prayer and Praying Men by E. M. Bounds — Bounds follows Elijah from his prayer that stopped the rain to the fire on Mount Carmel, and insists that the New Testament puts this fiery prophet alongside us, as a man like us, to show what an ordinary believer’s prayer can do. Start with chapter 6, “Elijah, the Praying Prophet”.