p. 14 | Elijah the Tishbite

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 10, 1861

Elijah the Tishbite

FROM "ELIJAH THE TISHBITE."

Ahaziah lies sick; but, alas, we behold in him the same state of mind on his sick bed as we perceive in many others who come within our own observation. Here is only another proof of the melancholy truth that the severest afflictions are ineffectual in themselves to soften the sinner's heart. . . . The idol at Ekron was supposed to give oracular answers, through the medium of its priests, respecting future events; and it had obtained such general credence, that it was resorted to from a considerable distance. That the predictions there uttered, and the prodigies there exhibited, were connected with infernal influence, can hardly be doubted. When, in the divine judgments upon Anti-christ and his kingdom, Satan shall suffer that signal defeat which is denounced against him in the word of God, it will be found that it was he who created and maintained the worship of idols, and that it was from his agency that the kingdom of darkness and falsehood received its principal support. . . .

The idol at Ekron and his oracle was the first remedy that the sick king of Samaria could think of. He assembled his servants about him, and proceeded by their means to an act of impiety as great as could well be committed in Israel. "Go," said he, openly and shamelessly, "inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this disease." Conduct such as this of Ahaziah, cannot outwardly be imitated by ourselves, because gross idolatry exists no longer among us, and the polite world is too enlightened to consult the Devil in person, having long held Satan and hell to be merely the puerile notions of antiquity. Yet after all we find upon closer inspection that even our own philosophic age is full of that heathen leaven, though it is now molded into a more refined form; and experience shows that disbelief in the "sure word of prophecy" only leads into new superstition. It is true the presentiment of an invisible world, and the necessity of entering it, is indelibly impressed upon the human mind. But those who scorn to submit this feeling to the rule of Scripture, and to seek satisfaction in the divinely revealed record, are sure to sink under the dominion of darkness and imposture. As a counterpart to the oracle at Ekron and Endor, we have, in the present day, visionaries and somnambulists; instead of the Delphic tripod and the Dodonian oak, we have pretended prophets and fortune-tellers, whose numbers are greater among the people than is generally supposed; and if we are above believing these, still we have our forebodings, our presentiments, and our dreams, of which many are apt to make as much as of the divine oracles. The place of the ancient heathen mysteries is occupied by a multitude of covert associations, in whose mystic obscurities thousands seek those disclosures which they refuse to accept from the hand of the living God; and though they can smile with scorn at the magicians of antiquity, they do not think it beneath them to have recourse to amulets and charms, to which popular belief ascribes mysterious powers; or they endeavor to cure diseases by what are called sympathetic remedies.

But suppose we are free from such superstitions, still, when we hear a mother entreating the physician to save her child, and when, upon any one's referring to the blessing of God for success, offense is taken at this reference, is not here the same spirit as we see in Ahaziah? Is not here a running after idols, an idolatry of means? Yet how common is this among us. How many are there who have never seriously thought of applying to the God of Israel, and who seem to know of no other God in their necessities and embarrassments, except the creature—dust and ashes! But wo unto those who give to idols the glory that belongs to God alone! That the Lord does not regard such conduct with indifference, the sequel of this narrative teaches us.