The Day Fire Fell on the Mountain

In the third year without rain, King Ahab was out hunting for grass to keep his horses alive. (Picture a king in his royal robes, poking along the ditches for a few green weeds.)

Elijah had been staying in the widow's upstairs room at Zarephath. Now God told him, "Go and show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the land."

Ahab saw him coming. "Is that you, you troublemaker of Israel?"

"I am not the one who has troubled Israel," said Elijah. "You have, because you left the LORD and went after Baal. Bring everyone to Mount Carmel, with Baal's prophets."

So the whole country climbed the mountain with four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. Queen Jezebel had been killing the LORD's prophets, and Elijah stood alone.

"How long will you wobble between two ways?" he shouted. "If the LORD is God, follow him. If Baal is god, follow him!"

Nobody said a word.

"Each side gets a bull and an altar, with no fire underneath," said Elijah. "The god who answers with fire is God."

"Agreed!" the people called.

Baal's prophets went first. From morning till noon they hopped around their altar. "O Baal, answer us!" Nothing.

At noon Elijah began to tease them. "Shout louder! Maybe he is busy, or off on a trip. Maybe he is asleep!"

They even cut themselves with knives until they bled. All afternoon they raved, but no voice answered and no spark fell.

Then Elijah mended the LORD's broken-down altar with twelve stones, one for each tribe of Jacob's sons, and dug a trench around it. "Fill four jars with water and pour it on the bull and the wood," he said. Then, "Again." Then, "A third time." Water soaked the wood and filled the trench.

Elijah prayed. "LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, answer me, so these people will know that you are God, and that you are turning their hearts back."

The fire of the LORD fell. WHOOSH. It burned up the bull, the wood, the stones, the dust, and licked up every drop in the trench.

The people fell on their faces. "The LORD, he is God! The LORD, he is God!"

"Seize the prophets of Baal," said Elijah. Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon and killed them there.

Elijah bowed on the mountaintop and sent his servant to watch the sea. Seven times he went. The seventh time he came running. "A cloud, no bigger than a man's hand!"

Soon the sky went black, and rain poured down. With God's strength, Elijah tucked up his robe and ran ahead of Ahab's chariot all the way to Jezreel. (Horses are faster than prophets. Usually.)

But the fire had fallen on one bull, on one day. Jezebel was still queen, and before long the people drifted back to Baal. Fire could show them who God was. It could not keep their hearts turned around.

Four hundred years after the fire on Carmel, the prophet Malachi made a strange promise: God would send Elijah again, to turn hearts back home. Later a preacher named John, dressed like Elijah, came out of the wilderness shouting, "Turn back to God!" He was getting the way ready for someone.

That someone climbed another hill, with a crowd against him, and died on a cross. Everything wrong that people had ever done came down on him, the way the fire came down on Elijah's soaked altar, so it would not come down on them. Jesus took all of it, and he turns hearts back to God for good.