Elijah the Tishbite by B. E. Connerly

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 4, 1913

Elijah the Tishbite

By B. E. Connerly

B. E. CONNERLY

Of that long line of holy men who through the ages have kept open communication between earth and heaven, Elijah the Tishbite is one of the greatest. Though romantic in the extreme, there is nothing legendary or mythical in the sacred chronicle concerning this man who was so jealous for the honor of Jehovah—he was the man for his time. In his short career of thirteen years he manifested to Israel the faith of Abraham, the patience of Job, the judicial ability of Moses, the courage of Daniel, and the eloquence of Paul; but a less complete combination of Christian qualities could never have dominated the apostasy of Ahab and Jezebel’s day.

Though the humblest of earth, Elijah, of all humanity, has been most honored of heaven. Nearly a thousand years after he had finished his militant course his progeny still looked for his return to champion the cause of Judaism. It is significant that in Scripture there is only enough said of him to make us know that he was a man of God, and possessed all the qualifications for a prophet of Jehovah, with but one unhappy reminder that he “was a man subject to like passions as we are.” Inspiration’s simple record is that he was “Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead.” I Kings 17:1. Politically a subject of Ahab’s kingdom, but spiritually “an Israelite indeed,” he was a wilderness prophet, a true son of the desert.

Elijah gave apostate Israel as positive evidence of the genuineness of his call to the prophetic gift as the mysterious “King of righteousness” gave the father of the faithful that he was “priest of the Most High God;” and, if possible, the sacred chronologist has told less of the genealogy of the Tishbite than the patriarchs made known of the king of Salem.

Historically, Elijah stood at the central point of man’s conflict with sin, midway between Eden lost and Eden restored; and at a time when the world was filled with paganism, and the worshipers of Jehovah were on the verge of apostasy. The characteristics which made his name so prominent in the sacred canon were his fealty to Jehovah, zeal for his service, and, consequently, uncompromising hatred of idolatry.

Elijah was not a great leader, but he possessed a great mind and extensive knowledge. He knew his people and the social and moral conditions of his day. He knew, too, that a storm was gathering that he could not prevent, and he could only watch and prepare for the crisis. While Elijah’s life was a series of hopes deferred, there is not related in the annals of human affairs a more sublime story than the strangely unequal contest between that intrepid servant of Jehovah and the priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel; nor in the history of sacred worship is there found more thrilling experiences than surround the life of Elijah the Tishbite.

To many, that terrible denunciation of apostate Israel is only the prating of an overzealous enthusiast; but when better understood, it will reveal Jehovah’s response to the deepest plot ever laid for the ruin of Israel. For ten long years, from his retreat in Gilead, Elijah watched Jezebel, and her hierarchy of foreign priests; saw them invade his country with a doctrine more desolating for his people than the devastations of an armed host. He saw liberty betrayed, his people forsake Jehovah and throw down his altars—but Jehovah’s servant must wait for his casus belli.

Not Noah at the time of the flood, Abraham in Canaan, Moses in Egypt, David with Saul, John the Baptist at the annunciation, or Paul before the Roman tribunal acted more wisely than Elijah in opposing the scheme of Jezebel.

As Daniel knew by Jer. 25:11 when the Babylonian captivity would terminate, so Elijah knew by Deut. 11:16, 17, that national apostasy would be punished by national calamity; and Joshua 6:26 and I Kings 16:29-34 told him that his people and his country were under the interdiction of heaven. Thus by the

Word of the Lord he knew that a famine was imminent, he knew that he was Jehovah’s messenger, and when his message of final denunciation came he could stand before Israel’s apostate king and declare that it was by his word that the heavens were shut up.

Though his heroic and dauntless courage was witnessed by Oriental Jews three millenniums ago, Elijah, preeminently, ministered to us; for the power and spirit by which he resisted apostasy will appear and reappear with increased intensity until the controversy between truth and error is finished. Just as the enforced idolatry of Jezebel’s day is a prophecy of a similar persecution on a grander scale in the last days, so will the zeal of Elijah be manifest, prior to the return of our Lord, in vigorous protests against civilly enacted ritualisms that are contrary to the Word of God.

In the Bible there is mentioned a line of men who have opposed the plan of God; such as, Pharaoh, Amalek, Balaam, Haman, Sanballat, Caiaphas, Simon-Magus, and Alexander the coppersmith; but Jezebel so far exceeded all of these in the art of deception that she has become the synonym for all that was perverse and wicked. The apostasy that she promulgated became national—Israel “forsook the Lord, and served Baal.”

The brave men who protested against all these apostasies are worthy of all honor, but Elijah, who denounced and defeated Jezebel, became the personification of loyalty and obedience. In Scripture his example still condemns those who would arise to draw away disciples after themselves.

As to the time when these two mighty characters will again dispute each other’s supremacy, we need not conjecture. Logically, it will be when the apostasy of all apostasies is enmeshing the church. Rev. 2:20 declares that Jezebel will again appear, and Mal. 4:5 says that the Lord will send Elijah the prophet. The grandeur of the latter prophecy and the sublimity of the subject carries us above and beyond all else but the time of the end and the second coming of Christ.

It is not that we expect a reincarnation of either the Tishbite or the high priestess of idolatry, but, we do expect that the conditions which prevailed then will be repeated when the time comes for the culmination of the controversy between righteousness and iniquity.

If we have correctly interpreted the prophecies and rightly applied the analogies, we are living in the times to which all these prophecies point, and again there is a storm gathering that none may prevent. Jezebel and Elijah are again gathering their forces for the final fray. Again an unscrupulous priesthood is making tentative proposals to the civil powers for a union that will easily develop an apostasy far greater than that which cursed Israel in the days of Jezebel. On the other hand, a mighty universal protest to a backslidden church is, “Ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord,” and have followed rites more pleasing and popular than the Baal worship which deluded Israel in the days of Elijah the Tishbite.

Ancon, C. Z.