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and who reprove sins. The unconsecrated will also be united with the
adversary of souls to make the work of God’s faithful servants as hard
as possible.
If my husband has been pressed beyond measure and has become
discouraged and desponding, if we have at times seen nothing desirable
in life that we should choose it, this is nothing strange or new. Elijah,
one of God’s great and mighty prophets, as he fled for his life from
the rage of the infuriated Jezebel, a fugitive, weary and travel-worn,
desired to die rather than to live. His bitter disappointment in regard
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to Israel’s faithfulness had crushed his spirits, and he felt that he could
no longer put confidence in man. In the day of Job’s affliction and
darkness, he utters these words: “Let the day perish wherein I was
born.”
Those who are not accustomed to feel to the very depths, who
have not stood under burdens as a cart beneath sheaves, and who have
never had their interest identified so closely with the cause and work
of God that it seems to be a part of their very being and dearer to them
than life, cannot appreciate the feelings of my husband any more than
Israel could appreciate the feelings of Elijah. We deeply regret being
disheartened, whatever the circumstances may have been.
Ahab’s Case a Warning
Under the perverted rule of Ahab, Israel departed from God and
corrupted their ways before Him. “And Ahab the son of Omri did
evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him. And it
came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the
sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel the
daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal,
and worshiped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house
of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a grove; and
Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the
kings of Israel that were before him.”
Ahab was weak in moral power. He did not have a high sense of
sacred things; he was selfish and unprincipled. His union by marriage
with a woman of decided character and positive temperament, who
was devoted to idolatry, made them both special agents of Satan to lead
the people of God into idolatry and terrible apostasy. The determined