ELIJAH AND HIS PROTOTYPES.
THE Bible deals in types. Adam is a type of the race. Cain is a type of evil men; Abel, of those who have faith in God. Noah in his name and work is a type of Christ. Abraham is a type of the faithful. Babel is a type of an attempt of organized self-salvation. Moses is a type of the great Teacher. And so we might enumerate throughout the Scriptures. Here is a picture, brief and imperfect, of the kingdom of Israel nine centuries before Christ: On the throne was weak and wicked Ahab, more weak than wicked. He was molded and led by the crafty, strong, utterly unprincipled Jezebel, a Zidonian princess, and a devotee of Baal, the Phenician sun-god. As a result of her influence over Ahab, he "went and served Baal, and worshiped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a grove [the Asherah]; and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him." 1 Kings 16:31-33. And the prophets of Baal numbered 450, and the prophets of the Asherah, that ate of Jezebel's bounty, 400. 1 Kings 18:19. All Israel was carried away by the idolatry. All the precepts of the Decalogue were transgressed, more especially those forbidding idolatry, Sabbath-breaking, and adultery. The worship of Baal and the Asherah included all the nameless abominations of licentious nature-worship. Against this flood-tide of iniquity God sent the prophet of the wilderness. With the suddenness of a lightning's flash, unheralded, unattended by visible escort, he appears upon the scene. From mountainous Gilead, where he dwelt as in the very presence of his Master, he appears before the startled king with the words, "As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." 1 Kings 17:1. He was God's messenger to reprove and warn sin-blinded Israel, and evidently among his earliest hearers was the king. There were but few who listened and fewer still who heeded the prophet's strong denunciations of sin and his earnest warnings of the sure harvest of wrath. The drought came, and the people of Israel reaped the harvest of their own sowing in the bare fields, the dry waterbeds, the dying herds, and the famine-stricken inhabitants. But instead of perceiving that they themselves were a cause of the suffering, they still worshiped the helpless gods of wood and stone. More than this, Ahab, who represented the State, stirred up by Jezebel, who represented the church, persecuted the prophet, hunting for him not alone throughout Israel, but among the adjacent nations. But God heard and delivered the prophet, and finally took him to Himself. Nor was Elijah's work vain. It seemed so to him at times, yet God had called out His faithful remnant, the 7,000 loyal souls, who had bowed not the knee to Baal, nor kissed him. God's judgments finally overtook both Ahab and Jezebel; they died in miserable dishonor. Almost a millennium later we find the Jewish nation, not sunken in Baal-worship, not led by the libidinous priests of the Asherah, but cast in a mold of dead formalism, enslaved to erroneous and elaborate tradition, and divided into various schools and sects. Formalism and hypocrisy cloaked a multitude of sins, and tradition had made void the commandments of God. One of the chief rulers in Palestine, Herod Antipas, a professed Jew, was a votary of pleasure and debauchery, led on by his mad infatuation for his guilty paramour, Herodias, the legal wife of Herod Philip. Ruler and people were as guilty before God as were Ahab and his subjects of old; and Herodias possessed all the malignity of Jezebel, if not her brilliancy and intellect. As of old, God sent His prophet to warn His people. Nay, more, He prepared that prophet in the wilderness as He had before prepared Elijah. He sent forth John the Baptist to reprove, rebuke, and warn Israel, and so to prepare them for the Coming One. Many heard his words; few heeded them. From the enslaved soldier to King Herod, conscience was aroused. But because of his message of reproof, the Jezebel of Herod put to death John the Baptist. How fitting was the type of Elijah! The backslidden people, the weak, wicked king, the skewed, crafty, scheming, ambitious woman, the bold prophet with his soul-stirring message, and the persecution which followed, of nine hundred years before Christ, were all more or less reproduced in the days just preceding the first advent of our Lord. Neither did John meet the type in its fulness. The prophet declares: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers with the children, and the heart of the children with their fathers; lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." Mal. 4:5, 6, R.V., margin. The great and terrible day of the Lord has not yet come; but all the indications of its coming, given of God in His Word, show that it is near and hasteth greatly. What is the condition of the professed Christian world?—It is just this: (1) A sad lament comes from the spiritual in all denominations that backsliding and apostasy and infidelity and cold formalism have honeycombed the church. Hypocrites, without number, are masquerading under the garb of piety. Traditions of the Dark Ages, having no foundations in the Word of God, such as that child of apostasy the heathen Sunday, make void the law of the Most High. The rulers of the present—the Ahabs of the State—are being beguiled by the apostate church, the Jezebel of the present, to unite more closely and to confirm by statute law the traditions of men. The times of Elijah are lived again in our generation. Will God again send a message? He did in the apostasy of Ahab. He did in the apostasy of the Herods and the Annases. He will in this generation. One man was sufficient for the type—Israel. His voice could be heard throughout the little typical land. One man was sufficient for later Israel. It was the same land, and the children of the same people. But the last message must be world-wide. It must reach the church of all lands. Through the church it must go out to all the nations of the earth. One man can not give the message, Elijah must be multiplied. Men in every land, in every clime, humble before God, seeing Him who is invisible, conscious of His presence, knowing His word and power, imbued with a love for souls, clothed with the Holy Ghost, must go forth in "the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts" of young and old to Christ and His salvation, as a refuge from the second death, the fruit of sin. These messages will be given:— "Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain; let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand." Joel 2:1. "Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come; and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters." This "everlasting Gospel," with its faithful reproofs and warnings, will be given to the world, whether men will hear or whether they will forbear. In fact, it is now being given to the world. God's searching, reproving, condemning, saving truth will be preached. It may cost some their lives, as it did John the Baptist. It will cost many persecution, as it7did Elijah. But it will be given—given to save men. Only the lovers of sin will reject it. Those who desire to do right, and all may, will heed it and be saved. They will turn from Baal to Jehovah, from the "traditions of men" to "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." And, as that message, with its hammer blows and fire-searching truths, comes to us, we must not say, We are the church; we are the children of "the fathers;" we are "sons of Abraham;" for, as of old, God is able of the stones of the desert to raise up children unto Abraham. Even now, as then, the ax is laid at the root of the tree; and every one that beareth not good fruit will be cast into the fire. But there is eternal salvation for every one in Christ Jesus who will heed the message.