REPAIRING THE LORD'S ALTAR

This was the next task that Elijah got engaged in after the contest. Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest so that the true God can be determined and the prophets of Baal accepted the challenge and the two had their altars respectively. Altars are places of making sacrifices to the deities they are made for to provoke their action or reaction to their worshippers.

Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, ''I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left'' but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets''. He told them to prepare their own altar and make sacrifices to their god (Baal) and call on him to answer by fire. This they agreed and did, from morning till noon and nothing happened. Elijah made fool of them by asking them to shout louder, perhaps their god was deep in thought, or busy, or travelling, or sleeping and needed to be awakened. They made their noisy chanting, danced about and made all sorts of acrobatics, and cut themselves with sword and blood gushed out to provoke Baal to act, but all these was empty display of spiritual blindness and moral decay.

After all these display, Elijah called on the people and the king who was sitting and watching the display; to come near. When they came near, He repaired the altar of the Lord which was in ruins in the presence of the people, with twelve stones representing the twelve tribes of Israel and in the name of the Lord who entered into covenant with their fathers- Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Hence, Elijah renewed the covenant which the people had broken down and called upon the Lord that answers by fire.  Before now, the people had not only killed God's prophets but had also thrown down His altars and rejected His covenants- 1 Kgs. 19:4