<TITLE>03. Par 17-23</TITLE>L-17   We know little about the prophets. We don't know where they come from. Very seldom... As, I don't know of any that come out of the church or had any genealogy behind them. It was just ordinary man that was fearless, and, many times, uneducated. And they never done any writing, themselves. Isaiah and Jeremiah, a couple of them, done some writings, but this great man Elijah never wrote one thing. Many of them didn't write; maybe they couldn't write. But they were man that were rugged. There's no man in the Bible like those ancient prophets. They defied kingdoms, kings, peoples, churches, and everything else, and stood firm on the Word of God, and God proved them to be right. They were very rugged individuals.

L-18 And this Elijah was one of the ruggedest of all of them. He was a man of the wilderness. He came out of the wilderness; he lived in the wilderness. The Bible said he dressed hairy. He had sheepskin wrapped around him, and a piece of leather, of camel skin wrapped around his loins, very... whiskers over his face, and I'd imagine he was a very rugged-looking man, and to look at.

L-19   But we didn't... they all didn't all die. They're not all--all dead. In the days of the Nicene Council... many of you people that's read The Nicene Council of the Early Church, when they wanted to make an organization out of it and break up all the other churches, and come into one, when they had that Nicene Council, rugged man like Elisha come in there from the wilderness, eating herbs alone; great rugged man. But the dignitaries, the high-ups, under Constantine, and so forth, stilled their voice. Because those, being prophets, knowed that the corn of wheat of the Church Bride had to fall in the ground, the same as a corn of wheat in the Bridegroom had to fall in the ground. And there it laid for a thousand years.

L-20 That's why they write in the books today, "Where is that silent God that could stand and look, see little children murdered, and women tore to pieces by lions, and sit in the skies and say nothing about it?" They don't know the Word. That corn of wheat's got to fall in the earth. How could a righteous God stand and look at His Own Son die and be spit on, and so forth? But it's according to the Word, it has to be. And that's the way it is even to this hour.

L-21   This man, he was a great man. He had a sinful generation before him. Ahab was king, his father before him had been evil. Ever since Solomon, there just been one evil king after the other. And this man, Ahab, who reigned twenty-two years in Samaria, was the worst of all of them. He was a real modernist. He believed in religion, certainly. And he had everything in a modern trend. He had his four hundred Hebrew prophets, all of them well-schooled and trained. God sent him one and he wouldn't believe it, and that was Elijah.

L-22 But Elijah, this Tishbite, was a man of the wilderness. Not a smooth man; he was a rugged man. And one day, after Ahab had sinned until God could stand it no more, He spoke to Elijah in the wilderness. And here he comes down the road to Samaria, as I've often illustrated; maybe the white whiskers sticking out around his face, bald head shining in the sun, little old narrow eyes, back there with a stick in his hand, a smile in his face, walked right up to the king of Israel, and said, "The... Not even dew will fall till I call for it."

L-23 God give us man like that, see, man who know what they're doing with THUS SAITH THE LORD.


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