This is a statue of Elijah killing one of the prophets of Ba'al. When I came to Mt. Carmel I was reminded of how powerful this event truly is. It is about a man who was the only prophet of Yahweh left in the land of Israel. He challenged all the prophets of Ba'al to a contest of sorts in order to show once and for all that Yahweh was the one, true and only God.
Both Elijah and the prophets of Ba'al had to sacrifice a bull on the alter and call out to their God. Whomever's God answered the prayer by consuming the sacrifice with fire from heaven would demonstrate whose God was the real God. As you may know, the prophets of Ba'al cried out to him all day long and got nothing. Elijah, on the other hand, cried out to God once and He answered not only by consuming the sacrifice but the entire alter and water that was thrown on it as well!
God had made His point. The LORD alone was the true and living God.
This caused me to think about our current day and age. We live in a time of plurality and relativism. There is no room for objective, absolute truth. This statue reminded me of Elijah's response to God's demonstration... He rounded up all 400 prophets of Ba'al and killed them.
We don't do that much today. I mean that figuratively more that physically of course. Today we are in a culture very tolerant of "other religions", "other ideas of truth", etc. We no longer take an active stand against these things. We simply say (to ourselves of course), "Well I respect your opinion but I have a different one and that's O.K. too." We may very well take a personal, private stand and believe what we know is true. But to willingly challenge these ideas and belief systems to a duel is not part of mainstream Christianity in the United States. There are a few brave souls but they are definitely not the everyday believer.
Maybe Elijah's approach is not the best method for demonstrating the truth of God's existence to our culture today. Still, I can not help but think that the spirit of what he did is exactly what we need in our culture today! Someone to draw a line in the sand and say, "Whose side are you on? No more riding the fence!"
But how do we translate that into our world? It is something I am thinking about.
