Imposed Baal Worship

The epoch of this time period’s struggle was illustrated when Ahab, a wicked king, married Jezebel, a wicked woman, and together they administrated a wicked kingdom. 

They replaced the worship of Jehovah, forced Baal worship and cultural assimilation upon the people of Israel. They attempted to kill all the prophets who spoke out against their doctrine of deception, and with the exception of a small remnant of prophets hidden away, they were very successful. They used kingdom resources to fund Baal initiatives. It was as though Nimrod and Semiramis were on the throne of Israel. Indeed, it was the same spirit of antichrist!

By intimidation or enticement, the defamation of God’s holy people through compromise unto corruption was imposed. Ahab and Jezebel used measures of replacement in both the religious and government system to hijack Israel – they were Satan’s architects of iniquity in their generation!

God said that Ahab did more evil than any of those before him and that he was a most wicked king (1 Kings 16:30). His wickedness did not start with Jezebel. Here is a hard stop truth: you can’t have a Jezebel without an amiable and weak Ahab. Ahab’s wickedness began in himself by abdicating his personal and national responsibilities to lead in accord with godliness. 

He chose disobedience, marrying and deferring his responsibilities to an unholy woman, a priestess for Baal. God would rather all of us fumble through our personal and social responsibilities and make a thousand mistakes if necessary, than to give our authority to someone else’s rule over our lazy selves! Here is a profound truth that is obvious, yet hard to reconcile ourselves to, defeat comes from within, not from without. Ahab was an inside guy who was given an entrusted position of power that brought ruin upon the people.

God sent His prophet, Elijah, to summon the people to observe true power compared to secular, unholy, and in many cases, demonic power. Elijah facilitated the demonstration of God’s power around a broken down altar. Restoring altars is a favorite pastime for prophets. God’s power totally trumped the power of the enemy on Mount Carmel. Elijah personally destroyed the prophets of Baal that day, however, he ran from a death threats made by Jezebel. 

Elijah ran far, far away from the dirty politics and the death threats of Jezebel to a private audience with the Lord. It’s not hard to imagine that Elijah was wondering why didn’t God just wipe out that ole’ dirty Jezzie and wicked wimp Ahab when Elijah restored the altar by the demonstration of God’s power.

In Elijah’s private audience with God, He first spoke by revealing the absence of His Voice in the great wind, the rumbling earthquake and the hot fire to the contrast of a gentle blowing, soft whispering – still, unhurried Voice for Elijah to hear and experience the fullness of His intimate Presence. God doesn’t want us to choose Him because He can clobber the enemy, or us for that matter, but because He is Beautiful, Lovely and Gentle in His ways with us. He doesn’t want to be doing a song and dance all the time to earn a place in our short attention spans to perform for our acceptance of Him. In the words of Jesus, “…only an adulterous generation seeks a sign...”

God asked Elijah twice why was he there. And Elijah answered twice by saying that he was the only faithful soul left in Israel. Elijah didn’t run because of his faithfulness to God – and neither do we. Elijah ran because he feared someone. God first answered Elijah’s pouty, lower-lip-out question by stating a fact, that He indeed had 7,000 faithful dear souls that had not bent their knee to Baal. It was a gentle and gracious way of saying, “That is not why you are here.”

Then God answered Elijah’s unspoken reason for being there, the one we can all well-imagine, “…what about those guys who are unfaithful to You? How can You let the bad guys get away with murder and corruption? I mean really God, Jerusalem is a mess!” 

God answers this unspoken, indirect question with a direct command for Elijah to anoint Elisha, who would be Elijah’s successor. And Elijah would not only NOT be put to death by Jezebel, but evade death altogether! In time, Elijah would get a royal, fiery chariot escort into God’s mighty company – the reward promised to all the faithful in the resurrection to come. Secondly, Elijah was to anoint a Syrian king who would be used by God to discipline Israel’s national unfaithfulness by invasion. And lastly, he was to anoint the man who would be authorized to kill Jezebel. God was basically saying, “Ain’t nobody getting by with jack and that justice will be served in My complete and thorough timing.”