Confidence in God by C. W. Swift

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 13, 1859

Confidence in God.

By C. W. Swift

It was vast confidence in God which nerved Elijah to face that haughty monarch, who had forsaken the commandment of his Lord, and pronounce that awful malediction, "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." He possessed the same virtue as he knelt upon mount Carmel, and with his serene brow towards the quietly sleeping sea, which lost itself in the distance, that man of God is praying for rain, that the long curse may be removed. And as he finishes his prayer he bids his servant go and look towards the sea: he goes and looks, and returns and says, "I see nothing." Again and again the prophet pours his supplication into the ear of God till the seventh time his servant returns and says, "There is a little cloud, rising out of the sea, like a man's hand."

Methinks I see that minute speck, which so satisfied Elijah's faith, like the sail of a lone vessel, away out on the heaving bosom of the Mediterranean, which already began to surge against the base of that sacred mount. It increases, and ere long a mighty thunder-cloud rolls up the brazen heavens, and the refreshing shower causes the parched fields of Israel, which for three and a half years had not drunk a drop of dew nor rain, to again bloom in beauty.

Time rolled on and Ahab forgot the dreadful lesson he had learned, and became as sinful as before. Suddenly Elijah appears before him again, and pronounces another awful curse, which was dreadfully fulfilled; after which, we see him seated upon an eminence, and Ahaziah sends a troop of horse, and as a sweeping gallop brings them to the base of that isolated hill, they bid him come down, for their king wants to make a prisoner of him. Elijah spake, and from the bending heavens of his God, forked lightnings stretched the entire company dead on the plain. A second fifty came, and were eager to lay their unholy hands on that man who reposed so much confidence in his God, and met the same fate. Woe to the wicked servants of that ungodly monarch, who would lay violent hands upon that heaven-protected prophet.

Moses possessed vast confidence also, when he besought God, whose feet were as a glowing furnace, who made mount Sinai smoke, blaze and tremble, as though ten thousand cannon were constantly being discharged on its summit, to show him his glory. God put him in the cleft of the rock, and held his hand over him, for it was impossible for Moses to live and see what this mighty stretch of faith prompted him to ask of God. How came these men by so eminent a degree of this virtue? We answer, by holding constant communion with the Lord their God. Was not Moses forty days with Jehovah in the secret pavilion of burning fire on mount Sinai, prior to his asking so large a boon? Did not Elijah converse with God and angels as with friends, for years before he was whirled up to glory in a fiery chariot?

Brethren, since as Paul says, it is a fruit of the Spirit, and since we would possess like faith, let us walk in the same path, and hold constant fellowship with the God of Moses and Elijah. Then, on wings of confidence, we can mount the skies, and scale the walls of heaven.

C. W. SWIFT.—[Wesleyan.]