Laodicean Church
253
suffocating, and the dust-storm blinds the eyes and nearly stops the
breath. The groves of Baal are leafless, and the forest trees give no
shade, but appear as skeletons. Hunger and thirst are telling upon man
[276]
and beast with fearful mortality.
All this evidence of God’s justice and judgment does not awaken
Israel to repentance. Jezebel is filled with insane madness. She will not
bend nor yield to the God of heaven. Baal’s prophets, Ahab, Jezebel,
and nearly the whole of Israel, charge their calamity upon Elijah. Ahab
has sent to every kingdom and nation in search of the strange prophet
and has required an oath of the kingdoms and nations of Israel that
they know nothing in regard to him. Elijah had locked heaven with his
word and had taken the key with him, and he could not be found.
Jezebel then decides that as she cannot make Elijah feel her mur-
derous power, she will be revenged by destroying the prophets of God
in Israel. No one who professed to be a prophet of God shall live.
This determined, infuriated woman executes her work of madness by
slaying the Lord’s prophets. Baal’s priests and nearly all Israel are so
far deluded that they think that if the prophets of God were slain, the
calamity under which they are suffering would be averted.
But the second year passes, and the pitiless heavens give no rain.
Drought and famine are doing their sad work, and yet the apostate
Israelites do not humble their proud, sinful hearts before God; but
they murmur and complain against the prophet of God who brought
this dreadful state of things upon them. Fathers and mothers see their
children perish, with no power to relieve them. And yet the people are
in such terrible darkness that they cannot see that the justice of God
is awakened against them because of their sins and that this terrible
calamity is sent in mercy to them to save them from fully denying and
forsaking the God of their fathers.
It cost Israel suffering and great affliction to be brought to that
repentance that was necessary in order to recover their lost faith and
a clear sense of their responsibility to God. Their apostasy was more
dreadful than drought or famine. Elijah waited and prayed in faith
through the long years of drought and famine that the hearts of Israel,
[277]
through their affliction, might be turned from their idolatry to alle-
giance to God. But notwithstanding all their sufferings, they stood
firm in their idolatry and looked upon the prophet of God as the cause
of their calamity. And if they could have had Elijah in their power