p. 11The question of who the prophets were, is delivered from all the fogs created by learning when we accept the Bible’s own simple testimony on the subject—against the reception of which, not a single good reason can be given. The propensity of human learning is to divest the prophets of any divine authority, and to bring them into the category of human thoughts and utterances. The testimony of the Bible is that the prophets were men whom God chose as vehicles of His own utterance and communication to the nation whom He had established for Himself. The testimony is explicit, simple, and clear. Here are samples:
“Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel . . . I have sent unto you all my servants, the prophets . . . saying, Return ye now every man from his evil way, and amend your doings, and go not after other gods to serve them” (Jer. xxxv. 15); “My words and my statutes which I commanded my servants, the prophets” (Zech. i. 6); “I sent unto you all my servants, the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Oh do not this abominable thing which I hate” (Jer. xliv. 4); “The Lord testified against Israel and against Judah by all the prophets and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways and keep my commandments” (2 Kings xvii. 13); “God . . . spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets” (Heb. i. 1).
Not only have we these general declarations of a divine authorisation of the words of the prophets, in a sense excluding literary authorship on their part, but we have express instruction as to the method by which those words became the words of God. And this instruction fences off all idea of those words being the words of the prophets in any sense of natural gift. Natural gift could not produce most of them. They are carefully discriminated from the words that a man might speak from natural impulse, and are expressly attributed to a divine impulse with which the prophet had nothing to do. p. 12 “Prophecy came NOT in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. i. 21). “Thou testifiedst against them by thy Spirit in thy prophets” (Neh. ix. 30). When this divine impulse was on a man, he could not resist it, as we learnt from the case of Jeremiah, already referred to (Jer. xx. 9). In the case of Ezekiel, its action is described circumstantially thus: “And the Spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet. . . . And he said unto me, Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak with my words unto them . . . When I speak with thee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God” (Ezek. ii. 2: iii. 4, 27).
A prophet might therefore be compared to an electric lamp with the electrical current turned on. Detached from the current, he was as dark as any other man; but with the power of the Spirit aglow, he showed the brightness of the mind of God in words which were the words of God, and not the words of the prophet. God alleges His connection with the matter thus:
“I have spoken by the prophets, I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes by the ministry of the prophets” (Hos. xii. 10). “I have hewed them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of my mouth” (Hos. vi. 5). “The Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants, the prophets” (Amos iii. 7).
The operation is illustrated in the case of the seventy elders appointed to assist Moses in the administration of the law in the congregation. “The Lord said unto Moses, Gather unto me seventy of the elders of Israel . . . and I will take of the Spirit which is upon thee and will put it upon them. And Moses went out and gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people, and set them round about the tabernacle. And the Lord . . . took of the Spirit that was upon him (Moses) and gave it unto the seventy elders. And it came to pass that when the Spirit rested upon them that they prophesied. But there remained two of the men in the camp . . . and the Spirit rested upon them. And they were of them that were written, but went not out unto the tabernacle, and they prophesied in the camp” (Num. xi. 16-26). Here was a simultaneous touching of seventy men by the Spirit, irrespective of locality, and being touched p. 13 they were affected and could not but speak, “as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
So at a crisis of danger in Judah, when Jehoshaphat the king held a public assembly in the temple for prayer, “Upon Jahaziel . . . came the Spirit of the Lord in the midst of the congregation. And he said, Hearken ye, all Judah and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem and thou King Jehoshaphat. Thus saith the Lord unto you, Be not afraid or dismayed by reason of this great multitude (that cometh against you). . . . Ye shall not need to fight in this battle. Set yourselves, stand ye still and see the salvation of the Lord. . . . to-morrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you” (2 Chron. xx. 14).
The simple truth is that the prophets were men by whom God spoke. Their words were not their own words. What they said, they said under the power of an impulse extraneous to their own faculties—which explains a good deal.
Among other things, it explains why they did not always understand what the Spirit uttered through them: as stated by Peter: “The prophets have enquired and searched diligently . . . searching what and what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow (1 Pet. i. 10-11).
The theories of learning assume that in dealing with the writings of the prophets, they are dealing with writings of an ordinary human origin. This renders it impossible that they can account for them or render them intelligible. They ignore the first principle of the subject and necessarily create confusion. The only key to the scripture of Moses and the prophets is their own truthfulness. The fact that explains all is the fact declared by Paul and Peter, and exhibited in their entire constitution; that God wrought with Moses, spoke by the prophets, and impelled them to commit to writing some portion of His word by them.
This fact cannot be taken away without arbitrary and unjustifiable and presumptuous violence. It may be denied, but the denial is mere assertion on the part of men who personally know nothing about it, but who wish to exclude God if they can. The simple reading of the writings in any translation whatever is sufficient to justify the p. 14 implicit confidence placed in them by Jesus and the apostles as the word of God.
The prophets very early made their appearance in the midst of Israel. Why need we trouble with the etymology of their name? Etymology may furnish a useful clue where particulars are not known: but when we know the facts of a case, etymology is useless, and may even be harmful in raising a dust over what we know—as if a man should try to learn the nature of electricity from an analysis of the term, and find himself floundering among amber as the source of the mysterious energy instead of being the mere accidental substance of its discovery.
The prophet was also called a seer (both terms are sometimes used in the same sentence—Isaiah xxx. 10; 2 Chron. xxix. 25). The term “seer” (chozeh, from the verb to see, and roeh likewise) expressed the fact that a man whose eyes God opened saw things unknown to normal human faculty (Num. xxiv. 3-4). The term prophet (nabi) from the Hebrew verb to flow forth, intimated that a man so illuminated could not repress the ideas afflating him, as in the case of the men in the house of Cornelius, upon whom the Holy Spirit having been poured out, all heard them speak with tongues (Acts x. 45-46).
That is all that the deepest learning amounts to on the etymology of the subject: only that learning conceals the part of God in the matter, and tries to make out the seeing and the outpouring to be something natural.
The popular idea that the prophets began with Isaiah and ended with Malachi is due to the mere arrangement of those prophetic books that have been preserved. The names of the prophets between Isaiah and Malachi represent but the merest fraction of the prophets that arose—a very important fraction to us, certainly—the most important that could be imagined; for without the books of these prophets, our knowledge of the mind of God as expressed through the prophets would be scanty to the famine point. Without these writings the prophets would be to us but a mere list of names, with the fragmentary sayings recorded in the historic books. The intensity with which, in that case, we should have desired to possess the sayings of the prophets in some extended form, we may only judge by the ecstatic appreciation with which wise men read and p. 15 value the actual compilation we have. Still, as a matter of fact, the advent of the prophets goes back to the very beginning of Israel’s history, and their activity forms a concurrent stream in that history, with little intermissions throughout, until the day threatened, broke upon Israel at last, when “the sun went down over the prophets,” and there was “no answer from God.”
We may say with truth that the prophets began before Moses passed off the scene. His words on the occasion of the appointing of his seventy helpers recognise their existence as a class (in the abstract, at all events), and also indicate for us that which constituted their prophetship. Enviest thou, for my sake,” said he to Joshua, who proposed the suppression of the two of the seventy who were prophesying in the camp (Eldad and Medad, who did not come to the muster at the tabernacle): “would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them” (Num. xi. 29).
For a man to have the Spirit of God operatively upon him (as distinguished from a mere state of natural faculty) was for a man to be a prophet (not necessarily a foreteller of future events, though that power was present if necessary, but) a revealer, a discloser, an utterer of the divine mind to which man in a normal state of nature has no access. In this sense, Moses himself was a prophet, and the greatest among the prophets before Christ. He is so described: “By a prophet the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he preserved” (Hos. xii. 13); “There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses” (Deut. xxxiv. 10). Moses also stands at the head of all the prophets in having had direct intercourse with God, and in having foretold the destiny of Israel for ages in advance, actually before their entry into the land (Deut. xxxi.-xxxii.; also Lev. xxvi., and Deut. xxviii.).
But it is in the history of Israel after the death of Moses that we are now to look more particularly for “the ministry of the prophets.”
This ministry is not a prominent feature during the times of the judges, which lasted from the division of the land under Joshua until Samuel the prophet—a period of about 450 years. The judges were not prophets, though prophets were in one or two cases judges p. 16 (e.g., Moses and Samuel). A judge was a leader possessed of legal authority over the people in all things, temporal and spiritual; whereas a prophet was a man qualified by the possession of the Spirit to teach the right way, and to express God’s thoughts concerning the doings of the people, but without authority to enforce the law. The judges might be considered as elective kings divinely raised up in the ways of Providence for the deliverance and protection of Israel; while the prophet was a mouthpiece of divine utterance in their midst, for message, expostulation, and reproof—as the situation might call for. It was a happy thing for Israel when the two things were united in the same person, as in the case of Samuel. But as a matter of ordinary experience, the two functions were separated, so that Israel had to look to the judge for the settlement of all questions of law and judgment in temporal matters; and to the prophet for information of God’s thoughts. To be a judge did not necessarily require inspiration, but no man could be a prophet except by the Spirit of God upon him. This discrimination between the two offices greatly helps the understanding of the narrative.
The first specifically-mentioned prophet after the settlement of the land under Joshua, was between the judgeship of Deborah and Gideon—nearly two hundred years after the crossing of the Jordan. His mission was a mission of reproof against Israel’s declension from the ways of God. As a result of this declension, Israel had come into great trouble at the hands of the Midianites, who had come into the land “as grasshoppers for multitude” and destructiveness. Israel “cried unto the Lord because of the Midianites,” and “the Lord sent a prophet” to them to explain the situation, which probably, in the lapse of time, they had ceased to understand.
No man could have told them God’s relation to the matter, or could have confidently maintained that God had anything to do with it at all. Human helplessness in this respect will be manifest to anyone who attempts the interpretation of the modern situation—that is, who attempts to answer the simple questions, What does God think of European life? or has He any knowledge or regard in the case one way or other? It requires the Spirit of God to answer such questions, and the Spirit of God coming on a man makes him a prophet, or a vehicle of the expression of the divine mind.
p. 17 In the case before us, “the Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel,” with this message: “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you forth out of the house of bondage. And I delivered you out of the hands of the Egyptians and out of the hands of all that oppressed you, and drave them out from before you, and gave you their land. And I said unto you, I am the Lord your God: fear not the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell: but ye have not obeyed my voice” (Jud. vi. 10). Israel humbled themselves, and there shortly followed deliverance by the hand of Gideon in a miraculous manner.
There had been a similar message of expostulation more than a hundred years before, namely, some time after Israel had subdued the land and had settled comfortably in their new possessions, but without that thorough expulsion of the Canaanites which had been commanded. Joshua was dead and all the elders that overlived him, and there had arisen “another generation which knew not the Lord nor yet the works which he had done for Israel” (Jud. ii. 8-10). The new generation had gradually relaxed their views of the stringency of the command to have nothing to do with the Canaanites but to destroy them. There is a long list in the 1st chapter of the Judges of cases in which the various tribal commanders had neglected to expel their Canaanitish neighbours, and had settled down into social dealings with them (see Jud. i. 21-35).
In this case, not a prophet, but “an angel” came to the tribes living in the northern districts of the land, and spoke with such effect that the multitude who heard his words at a place afterwards called Bochim (weeping) because of the effect produced, broke out into lamentation and tears. The angel said, “I made you to go up out of Egypt and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers. And I said . . . ye shall throw down their altars. But ye have not obeyed my voice. Why have ye done this? Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you (any more), but they shall be as thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare unto you” (Jud. ii. 1-5).
A prophet is a messenger (2 Chron. xxxvi. 16) and in this sense, an angel (which means messenger). But there are higher messengers than mortal men—messengers that “excel in strength” p. 18 (Psa. ciii. 20), and whose countenances are “very terrible” (Jud. xiii. 6), whose normal aspect is that of spirit brightness (Acts x. 3-30; Matt. xxviii. 2-3) and concerning whom Jesus says the accepted of mankind will be made equal to them and will die no more (Luke xx. 36). It is evident from the language of the angel of Bochim that he belonged to this class, and was no mere messenger. An ordinary prophet says, “Thus saith the Lord”: this messenger says, “I made you to go up out of Egypt. . . . I said ye shall make no league,” &c. This is a peculiarity perpetually recurring in the Bible record of the works of God among men. The angels speak as if they were God, like the angel of the bush: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Ex. iii. 2-6). The explanation of this we have seen on former occasions (notably The Ways of Providence and The Visible Hand of God). It is referred to now as proving that the angel of Bochim was no mere prophetic messenger, but one of the angels of almighty power.
It is a striking circumstance that the first reprover of Israel’s waywardness should be an immortal angel, and the long succession of the reprovers who came after should be mortal men. It is in harmony with the angelic origin of Israel’s commonwealth. Stephen told the Sanhedrim, “they received the law by the disposition (or mediation) of angels” (Acts vii. 53). Paul also refers to the law as “The word spoken by angels” (Heb. ii. 2). God had said, “Behold I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee unto the place which I have prepared. Beware of him and obey his voice: provoke him not: for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him” (Ex. xxiii. 20).
This appears to have been the personage who introduced himself to Joshua, outside the walls of Jericho, as “captain of the Lord’s host” (Josh. v. 13-15). What more natural than that he should openly reprove the whole nation when Joshua was dead, and the current of things was setting in the wrong way? But afterwards, when apostasy became the established and incorrigible habit of the nation, it seemed equally natural that not angels but the mortal descendants of Levi should be employed as rebukers of the nation’s folly. The angels retired into the background. God hid His face in the spirit of Hos. v. 15: “I will go and return p. 19 unto my place till they acknowledge their offence and seek my face.” At last, even the prophets were removed. “We see not our signs: there are no more any prophets.” Israel has been “many days” without the privileges with which they began their national existence, as foretold (Hos. iii. 4).
SAMUEL, under the interesting circumstances recorded in the first three chapters of 1 Sam., was “established to be a prophet of the Lord.” For a long preceding season, there had been “no open vision,” and “the word of the Lord was precious in those days” (iii. 1). But in Samuel’s lifetime, there was a great change in this respect. Both “the prophets” and the “sons of the prophets” became a flourishing institution. We read in connection with the anointing of Saul as king that “a company of the prophets met him, and the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied among them. And it came to pass that when all that knew him beforetime saw that behold he prophesied among the prophets, then the people said one to another, What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?” (1 Sam. x. 10-12).
A still more interesting illustration is found at the close of the days both of Samuel and Saul—a case which not only shows the prophetic institution in full and vigorous operation under the hand of Samuel, but shows the ascendant and irresistible operation of inspiration upon those who become the subjects of it—whether willing or not. Saul had become the enemy of David: “So David fled and escaped and came to Samuel at Ramah and told him all that Saul had done to him: and he and Samuel went and dwelt in Naioth. And it was told Saul . . . and Saul sent messengers to take David: and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying and Samuel standing as appointed over them, the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul, and they prophesied likewise. And Saul sent messengers again the third time, and they prophesied also. Then went he—Saul—also to Ramah and came to a great well that is in Sachu, and he asked and said, Where are Samuel and David? And one said, Behold they be at Naioth in Ramah. And he went thither to Naioth in Ramah, and the Spirit of God was upon him also and he went p. 20 on and prophesied until he came to Naioth in Ramah. And he stripped off his clothes also and prophesied before Samuel in like manner and lay down naked all that day and all that night” (1 Sam. xix. 18-24).
When Samuel died, Saul was left to his own resources. The company of prophets organised under Samuel would probably scatter. At all events, “When Saul enquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets” (1 Sam. xviii. 6). Then came Saul’s death, and David’s reign. DAVID himself was a prophet, as Peter informs us (Acts ii. 29-30). His prophetship may be said to have dated from the youthful day of his anointing by Samuel in his father’s house, for we read on that occasion, “The Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward” (1 Sam. xvi. 13). And it may be said to have gone right up to the day of his death, for in “the last words of David,” we read, “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me and his word was on my tongue” (2 Sam. xxiii. 1-2).
It is this fact that gives to the Psalms of David the divine character attributed to them in all apostolic allusion (Acts i. 16: iv. 25: xiii. 33, and many other places). They are the writings of the Spirit of God, and not the natural literary effusions of David at all, as Jesus repeatedly recognises (Matt. xxii. 13; Mar. xii. 36; Luke xxiv. 44). But though David was himself a prophet, it did not exclude the accessory activity of other prophets during his life and reign.
Thus the prophet GAD gave him counsel while he was yet a fugitive in the lifetime of Saul (1 Sam. xxii. 5). Thus also “NATHAN the prophet” revealed to him the covenant of the throne after David had been king some years (2 Sam. vii.), and by the hand of the same prophet, the divine rebuke was administered in the matter of Bathsheba (2 Sam. xii. 1). By Gad also, who on this occasion is called “David’s seer” (implying a special vehicle of communication with God), God offered David the choice of three punishments in punishment of the political pride of the census (2 Sam. xxiv. 11). “Nathan the prophet” was also very prominent in the proceedings connected with the accession of Solomon and the pretensions and defeat of Adonijah (1 Kings i.). p. 21 At the end of Solomon’s reign, when Solomon’s departures from the right way were exciting God’s displeasure, “the prophet AHIJAH, the Shilonite,” appears on the scene to intimate the coming rupture of the kingdom, and the transfer of ten tribes to Jeroboam, a servant of Solomon (1 Kings xi. 29-39). His words are a direct message from “The Lord God of Israel,” in the first person. Then, when the revolution had taken place, and Jeroboam was established on the throne as king of the ten tribes, we read of a nameless prophet, “a man of God out of Judah,” journeying to Bethel “by the word of the Lord,” with a heavy message to Jeroboam, whose headquarters were there, and who was behaving worse than Solomon (1 Kings xiii. 1-10). The controlling action of inspiration is signally illustrated in the sequel to his message.
There were present on the occasion of the prophet’s message and attendant incidents, the sons of another prophet—an old prophet who dwelt at Bethel. The old prophet was at home. When his sons came home and told him what had happened, his interest was strongly excited in “the man of God out of Judah,” who, in obedience to the Lord’s command, had started on his journey home as soon as his message was delivered, without staying at Bethel for any refreshments. Having ascertained the route he had taken, he started after him to bring him back, and found him resting on the roadside, under a tree The old prophet asked the man of God to come back with him and accept his hospitality. The man of God informed the old prophet of the command he had received, to “neither eat bread nor drink water at Bethel.” The old prophet said, “I am a prophet as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied unto him.” The man of God either did not suspect falsehood or gave in to a proposal that was agreeable to his fatigued feelings, contrary to the command that he himself had received. He went back with the old prophet, and entered into his house. The old prophet would, of course, be anxious to keep up the false impression he had made on the mind of the man of God. But while they sat at table together, the old prophet, under the impulse of the Spirit of God, broke through all the rules of hospitality, and “cried” to the man of God thus: “Thus saith the Lord, Forasmuch p. 22 as thou hast disobeyed the mouth of the Lord, and hast not kept the commandment which the Lord thy God commanded thee, but camest back and hast eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which the Lord did say to thee, Eat no bread and drink no water, thy carcase shall not come into the sepulchre of thy fathers.” When he was gone, a lion met him by the way and slew him. The case is also important as showing how necessary it is that we should act on what we ourselves know to be the will of God, and not allow any second party to come between, even if he should say, “I am a prophet as thou art.”
Then we have Jeroboam, several years after he had been king, sending his wife to “Ahijah the prophet, which told me that I should be king over this people,” to know how it should fare with his son who was sick (1 Kings xiv. 1-2). Not that Ahijah was a fortuneteller. It was the idea of Jeroboam, who was an unenlightened man, that as Ahijah had correctly informed him of his elevation to the throne at a time when such an event was most improbable, he would likely be able to inform him about the destiny of his son. Ahijah’s correct prophecy of the kingdom was a direct message from God, and not a reading of the future by Ahijah: but Jeroboam probably did not understand, and sent his wife to Ahijah as anyone would send a messenger to a soothsayer. Ahijah could not see, for his eyes were set by reason of age: “And the Lord said unto Ahijah, Behold the wife of Jeroboam cometh to ask a thing of thee for her son: for he is sick. Thus and thus shalt thou say unto her; for it shall be when she cometh in that she shall feign herself to be another woman. And it was so when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet as she came in at the door that he said, Come in thou wife of Jeroboam: why feignest thou thyself to be another? I am sent to thee with heavy tidings. Go tell Jeroboam, thus saith the Lord God.” Then followed a message from God, telling of the fatal result of the sickness and of coming disaster to Jeroboam’s house because of Jeroboam’s disregard of the law.
The next prophet appears in about a generation afterwards, in the reign of Baasha, by whom the evil prophecy against Jeroboam was fulfilled: for “it came to pass when he reigned, that he smote all the house of Jeroboam: he left not to the house of Jeroboam any p. 23 that breathed, until he had destroyed him, according to the saying of the Lord which he spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite” (1 Kings xv. 29). “By the hand of the prophet, JEHU, the son of Hanani, came the word of the Lord, against Baasha and against his house, even for all the evil that he did in the sight of the Lord in provoking him to anger with the work of his hands, in being like the house of Jeroboam, and because he killed him” (1 Kings xvi. 7).
Several reigns later, the prophets as a class come into distinct view in what is said concerning the action of Jezebel, the wife of Ahab: that she “cut off the prophets of the Lord.” At the same time, “OBADIAH took an hundred prophets and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.” Jezebel was the daughter of a Canaanitish king (Ethbaal, King of the Sidonians—1 Kings xvi. 31): and as a worshipper of Baal, she had an aversion to “the prophets of the Lord,” whom she sought thus to get rid of, substituting “the prophets of Baal” in their place. The latter were brought to a public test at a time when “ELIJAH, the Tishbite,” imagined he was the only survivor of the Lord’s prophets (xix. 10). There had been a water famine for more than three years; and Ahab, who superstitiously attributed it to the magical power of Elijah, said to Elijah when he found him, “Art thou he that troubleth Israel? And Elijah answered, I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father’s house (have done so), in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim. And now (let us bring the matter to a test). Send and gather all Israel unto Mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal, four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the grove, four hundred, which eat at Jezebel’s table . . . the God that answereth by fire, let him be God.”
Ahab acted on this proposal. The prophets of Baal were duly mustered in the presence of a multitude of the Israelites. Elijah came to them and said: “I, even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Let them give us two bullocks; let them choose one bullock for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on wood and put no fire under, and I will dress the other bullock and lay it on wood and put no fire under. And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of Yahweh. And the God that answereth by fire, let him be God.”
p. 24 The people applauded the proposal, and the test sacrifices were offered. The prophets of Baal “took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, ‘O Baal, hear us.’ But there was no voice nor any that answered.” When mid-day was past, and the Baalite sacrifice was a manifest failure, “Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me.” When he had completed the arrangements for offering the second bullock, he said, “Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood. And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time. And the water ran about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.”
He then offered a brief prayer to “the Lord God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Israel,” requesting that He should let it be known that day before the multitude that He was God. “Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces, and said, Yahweh, he is God; Yahweh, he is God. And Elijah said, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them. And Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there” (1 Kings xviii. 17-40).
Elijah was not the only prophet of the Lord surviving at that time, though he thought so. Not only were there seven thousand men who had stood faithfully aloof from the national apostasy (xix. 18), but there were other prophets who began to show themselves again after the slaughter of the priests of Baal. One of them came to Ahab during the siege of Samaria, and promised the destruction of the Syrian besiegers, which came to pass (1 Kings xx. 13). The prophet also came to him on two subsequent occasions, and gave him valuable precautionary information (verses 22, 28). When Ahab, in harmony with that information, had got the Syrian king, Benhadad, into his power, but had let him go instead of destroying him, another divine messenger, “a certain man of the sons of the prophets,” came to him with a message of reproof, at which “the King of Israel went to his house heavy and displeased, and came to Samaria” (1 Kings xx. 43).
p. 25 At the end of Ahab’s reign, there was quite a dramatic illustration of the relative positions occupied in the kingdom of the ten tribes by the false prophets and the true. Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, having consented to help Ahab in an expedition for the recovery of Ramoth Gilead, Jehoshaphat, with an evident uneasiness, suggested enquiry at the word of the Lord as to the success of the expedition. Ahab, in response, “gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men,” propounding this question for answer: “Shall I go against Ramoth Gilead to battle, or shall I forbear?” The answer was prompt and unanimous enough: “Go up, for the Lord shall deliver it into the hands of the king.”
But Jehoshaphat was not satisfied. Why he should be dissatisfied we can only guess. The four hundred prophets who were paraded in his presence by Ahab were professedly “prophets of the Lord”—no longer prophets of Baal; evidently the slaughter of Baal’s prophets on Mount Carmel by Elijah had ended that caste. Still, they were evidently of the same sort—flippant time-servers whose ruling aim was to please the king: men professing to be prophets, but who were not so, and therefore ‘false prophets—prophets of the deceit of their own hearts,” and not of the word of the Lord. So Jehoshaphat wished to know if there was no other prophet besides the four hundred.
Ahab answered, “There is yet one man, MICAIAH, son of Imlah, but I hate him, for he doth not prophecy good concerning me, but evil.” Jehoshaphat had probably heard of this man, and he was sent for. The messenger that went for him, told him that the prophets were unanimous in their prediction of good: “Let thy word, I pray thee,” said he, “be like the word of one of them, and speak that which is good.” Micaiah’s rejoinder was that of a true man: “What the Lord saith unto me, that will I speak.” When brought to the two kings, he foretold in a parable the disastrous ending of the enterprise for Ahab. The head of the four hundred (Zedekiah, son of Chenaanah) went straight to Micaiah and hit him on the face, saying, “Which way went the Spirit of the Lord from me to speak unto thee?” Micaiah’s answer was an appeal to the logic of events: “Thou shalt see in that day when thou shalt go into an inner chamber to hide thyself” (1 Kings xxii. 25). Then the king gives p. 26 lordly command to have Micaiah, “this fellow,” strictly imprisoned, “till I return in peace.” What could be more to the point than Micaiah’s response: “If thou return at all in peace, then hath the Lord not spoken by me.”
This is the great test of all men professing to be prophets: Do their words come to pass? It is the test that the Scriptures recommend, and it is certainly the one that plain sense would lead every man to apply: “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken” (Deut. xviii. 22). Tried by this simple rule, not only are the false prophets of all ages found out, but the true prophets are shown and established. This simple rule proves the divinity of the Scriptures of Moses and the prophets beyond all cavil. All that they have foretold has come to pass, down to date. If this be the case for 3,000 years past, how can reason doubt concerning that which still remains to be fulfilled?