The True Narrowness

So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel. And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. 1Kings 18:20-21

"How the pulse quickens as we read the story! In his splendid isolation stands Elijah against king, court, and nation. For three years he has been a hunted fugitive; for three years Jezebel has enjoyed her wicked triumph; but this one man is unsubdued and unsubduable. At last he comes forth from his desert, and he comes like a thunderbolt. He bars the way of the king’s chariot with a gesture, and silences him with one stern accusation: “Thou and thy father’s house have made Israel to sin!” Never was the fearlessness of right so splendidly illustrated, or the impotence of evil so conclusively exposed. The hunter is dumb before his prey; the tyrant quails before his victim. There is a royalty in righteousness before which all other royalty is but tinsel; there is a supremacy in goodness which strikes the wicked dumb. Are you armed with that supremacy? Dare you stand fearless in the right though the heavens fall? Only then is man invulnerable. No one can defeat a man who is in the right. He may be a wild man of the desert and stand in tattered garb, but the chariots of wrong stop at his signal, and kings fear his face. When Elijah says, “Gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel,” Ahab knows he must obey. So to Carmel Israel is gathered; there the broken altars are rebuilt, and there the question of the text is put to the vast multitude, who at last, when the fire of God descends, cry in fearful acquiescence not less than profound conviction, “The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.”
(excerpt from Great Texts)

Jehovah or Baal
The God of this World Takes Various Forms

Elijah called the people to decide between two Gods—Jehovah and Baal. This decision has to be made in every age. Now Baal, the male, and Ashtaroth, the female, represented the fertilizing and productive principle in nature, and their worship was that of power. To the more cultivated and refined, it was simply a species of pantheism; to the multitude, it was what one has called “the worship of deified abundance, under a splendid and sensuous ceremonial”; or, as Maurice has put it, “The worship of Baal was the worship of power as distinguished from righteousness.” But we are less concerned with what Baal stood for to the Israelites than with what “the God of this world” means to ourselves.

(1) Here is one form. We do not cast him into the form of a graven, or a molten, image; we may not set him up in the “plains of Dura, in the province of Babylon,” but we set him up in London, at the Stock Exchange. We have little images of him in our own houses, and we worship him with the “sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music,” and we call him Money. We are great at the worship of Mammon. People never seem tired of burning incense to wealth. To-day, a man may be so despicable a creature that we would not demean ourselves by touching him with the extreme tip of our little finger. He suddenly becomes heir to ten thousand a year, and to-morrow we are only too glad to get into our carriage and call upon him. What has made the difference? He has become a successful “worshipper of the golden image,” and we, as other high priests of this idolatry, are bound to fraternize with this excellent person. Who is he? “The God of this World.” The Baal of our day.

(2) Here is another “God of this world”; we set him up on a lofty tower of ivory, or we put him into one of our superb equipages, and roll him through the street, with a four-in-hand, and we call him Rank! And everybody bows down and worships this God, as he passes along. Look at him there, as he goes along in all his splendor, and the votaries of this world bow down with profound obeisance, and do him honor.

(3) Here is another “God of this world”! We deck him with all kinds of silks, satins, and load him with jewelry, and we call him Fashion. We put him in our drawing-rooms; our roués are skillful in his worship, and women are specially devoted to him. If he makes us ridiculous it is no matter. Any kind of eccentricity is pardoned, even though our own tastes condemn us for the form our worship assumes, though our own reason may rise up against it, and we may sometimes say, as we look into our glass, “What a ridiculous, empty-headed, wax doll I have made of myself.” Yet in the very same moment we none the less eagerly offer our incense to the worship of the God that we have made.

(4) Here is another God. We beat drums, and we blow trumpets; we deck him in scarlet regimentals; and we write the name Ambition upon his brow, and fall down and worship him. What deity so great as this God? We honor him supremely; we are never tired of speaking about him; poets write of him; and philosophers go out of their way to make themselves ridiculous about him; even ministers of the gospel of peace can become eloquent in sounding forth the praises of what they are pleased to call “glory.”

(5) Or it may be we call him Pleasure. He puts on the fool’s mask, and wherever he goes eager crowds of admirers follow him. “There goes the God of this world.” “Have you heard So-and-so? Go and hear him: why, you would die of laughing!” As though it were worthy of the dignity of humanity to lay itself out for levity; as though we were not frivolous enough by nature, but must needs pay our fellow-travelers on the broad road to make us more frivolous than we were before. (Note: Canon Hay Aitken)

Elijah and the prophets of Baal
​And Elijah said unto them, 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. 1Kings 18:40

To end this devotion I'm going to add my thoughts, and some comments, and how I see it relates to today. I have no doubt, what I say will not be popular.

The world today is full of a level of lying, cursing, and wickedness, that can compare to the days of Elijah. Not only is it considered normal, but, if you speak up against this to any degree you will be met with a tidal wave of vile responses. If you speak up and use the word of God in the manner it's intended, and not whitewashed, in many churches, you will find yourself given the left foot of fellowship and told not to come back. I've had it done to me. You'll be accused of being unloving, bitter, hard to get along with, and a lot more. 

The name of the game in society is go along, to get along. Be sweet, learn how to tell people how wonderful they are-and it doesn't matter how foulmouthed you are, you can use the most vile curses and still be honored and praised, as long as you never touch the subjects that would expose their crooked, lying conduct. Don't try to speak truth to people who have no desire to know truth-they are very happy being gaslighted, lied to, and scammed, as long as you remain one of them, and fit into their crowd. If you won't follow them or the idolatry their living in, you will very soon find yourself the outsider.

This is what Elijah was, and he decided companionship with God, was worth more than the phony sham the people were living for, and separated himself from them, and the prophets of Baal and exposed them. For this, he found himself an enemy of Jezebel and Ahab.

At the showdown at Mt. Carmel, he called on God to answer him and consume the sacrifice, to show the people that He was the real God, and expose their idolatry. When God sent the fire down and consumed it-the people fell on their faces. After he killed the over 400 false prophets, Jezebel threatened to have him killed and chased him down to do it.

Question: If any preacher/evangelist/prophet-or even just an on fire believer came today, and spoke and acted like Elijah, what would happen to them? They'd be accused of being mentally ill, unstable, irrational, intolerant, violent. They'd be accused of having no love. They'd be tracked, psychoanalyzed, taken into custody, and put behind bars somewhere. This is the difference between what God thinks of those who won't compromise and serve the devil-and what the world thinks of them. There's a lot of innocent people in cages, and prisons, that are in this category today. The increase of hatred of uncompromising Christians today, need to know what the level of hatred is against them, if they don't know it already. What's being done in this country to kill the morals, and faith in God by the government, and the crooked people working in it, is a serious sign of what we are coming up against.

Question 2: What do you think this country would be like today, if the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the original laws of this land were enforced the same way they were intended by the Founding Father's of this country, when they put them into place? If the boundary laws of this country were enforced as they were written and put into place-would we be in the crisis we are in now? If the people who are supposed to be the servants of this country were bound by the laws that are in place, and they could not remain in office if they are proved to be corrupt, and inept, would we be on the brink of collapse now? We are a nation saturated with sin, and idolatry, and we are reaping what we have sown.

I've been walking with the Lord for over 45 yrs., and seen the rise of hatred for Christians, and the collapse of society-everything is upside down. The trials, and confrontations I've had over the years has caused me to cleave to the Lord Jesus Christ as my only source of companionship, comfort, and a refuge from the deceptions, lies, and attacks from the devil that comes from every direction. If I want to know how to discern truth from error on any subject-I pick up my Bible and find the subject I'm dealing with, and start reading, and praying about it. God has never failed to give me the needed answer. He's proved to me just as he did Elijah, that He is the Only true and Living God. I'll end with this quote by Dr. Cadman: it defines this prophet well- "Elijah was intolerant—narrow, as some would call it. Some things must be narrow in order to do their work. You want a narrow edge on your razor. About the broadest thing in the world is the Desert of Sahara. No Christian should attempt a compromise between wrong and right."
Lorna Couillard
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​Mat 7:13  Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 
Mat 7:14  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.