“the God who answers by fire …” (1 Kings 18:24, NKJV)
Although the Bride “walk[s] by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7), there comes a time when the believer’s mantle of authority is tested to reality. Elijah’s spells out the condition of this confrontation between him and the Baal prophets in 1 Kings 18:23-24: “Therefore let them give us two bulls; and let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other bull, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it. Then you call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord; and the God who answers by fire, He is God.”
The showdown Elijah is suggesting is not without historical precedent. In Lev. 9:23-24 we for instance read the following: “And Moses and Aaron went into the tabernacle of meeting, and came out and blessed the people. Then the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people, and fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat on the altar. When all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.” But this was not the main reason why Elijah had suggested it. Apart from being known as the fertility god (thus also the god who brings rain to the earth), Baal is also knows as the god of lightning (The Bible Knowledge Commentary), and obviously this would be more acceptable to the worshippers of Baal! They did however not reckon with the fact that “our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29)!
We should however understand it in the context of the New Testament, and here a footnote on this section in John Darby’s Synopsis contains an apt summary: “Let us remark here that this book gives us, as a solemn and positive declaration of the prophet’s, that which we know from James’s testimony to have been an answer to the prayer of a man like ourselves. This is the history of all true spiritual energy. It appears to man as a simple action, accompanied with more or less demonstration on God’s part, and as a proof of the authority and spiritual power of the man who performs it; and so it is. But at the same time, in fact, all these things flow from the energy of divine life, and from communion with God; they are its expression and its fruit, but in power exercised on God’s part.”
Rom. 5:10 suggests that we are reconciled with God through the death of Jesus, but that we are also “saved by His life” in every situation that we encounter in our daily lives! Jesus is not only the Way (first dimension) and the Truth (second dimension) – according to John 14:6 He is also the Life (third dimension). We live through HIS life, which becomes “the energy of divine life” within us!
Elijah asks a theophany of God (read the teaching of Day 663-664 again), an appearance of God. What would the bull on the altar typologically represent? There will be more on this in the next teaching.
- Selah: Understand Rom. 5:10 (also read Col. 3:3-4 along with this).
- Read: 32-33; Matt. 11; Ps. 131.
- Memorise: 11:11.
