1 Kings 19:18
Apostasy is an abandonment of what one has professed; a total desertion, or departure from one’s faith or religion. One does not have to be an erudite and educated scholar to recognize the apostasy of our age.
The foundations of Christian truth, thought and practice are being attacked with vitriol and vengeance by an increasingly secularized and pagan culture. One may learn about the favorability of homosexuality in our public school system... (in fact it is now mandated in some districts), but one cannot pray or mention Jesus in a Valedictory address. Students are instructed in prayer uses of prophylactics but will not learn about virtue and chastity.
Scriptures warn that apostasy will become so virulent that good will be called evil, and evil good. A culture can become so morally corrupted that the foundations laid by Godly ancestors in blood, intrepid spiritual warfare and determination will only be a distant memory, a quaint anachronism.
Israel experienced the contaminating influence of apostasizing compromise in her history. Ephraim (the Northern tribes) was most severely affected because of the idols erected by Jeroboam and his physical and spiritual descendants. Also, she was farthest away from the Temple and access to priests and Levites. Moreover, God had promised to keep the flickering flame of living truth alive in the Davidic kings, even though some of them were anything but orthodox in their faith.
When wicked, pusillanimous Ahab married Jezebel, a whole new chapter of apostasy and persecution began for Ephraim. Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, King of Sidon (1 Kings 16:31) and of all Phoenisia. The marriage was probably political convenience, to strengthen an alliance between Israel and Phoenicia begun by Omri. She was strong-willed and thus her pagan influence not only conquered a quisling King Ahab, it adversely affected all of Ephraim.
Because of his wife, Ahab accepted the worship of Baal (1 Kings 16:31), built a house of worship for Baal in Samaria (1 Kings 16:32), set aside a grove for Ashera (1 Kings 16:33) and began a campaign to exterminate God’s Prophets under the insistence of his homicidal wife (1 Kings 18:4). Hundreds were slaughtered.
She moved her husband to poach Naboth’s vineyard after she used lies and false accusations to have that righteous man killed. Her corrupting and contaminating influence spread even to Judah via her daughter Athaliah (who murdered her own grandchildren) who married Jehoram. Revelation 2:20 describes a “Jezebel” as a prophetess who seduced believers in Thyatira into fornication and eating foods sacrificed to idols. Her name and character are representations of manifold evil in the Scriptures.
Had Ahab obeyed God’s prohibitions against an Israelite marrying a Canaanite, none of these despicable evils would have occurred. Ahab proved to be a pliable puppet in her evil hands. All of her sinister machinations were carried out by her weak-willed casper milk-toast husband. She came very near to bringing the House of David to extinction.
Who was the false god Baal worshipped by Jezebel? The name means Lord or Master. He was the primary pagan idol of the Phoenicians and Canaanites. Assyrians and Babylonians called him BEL, and he was manifested in an image of a bull or calf.
Baal was a god of fertility: in agriculture, beasts and with mankind. In Israel, there were few natural streams and springs, and although there were two rainy seasons (spring and fall), rain was uncertain. The cult of Baal included ritual prostitution of both sexes (Judges 2:17) and child sacrifice (Jeremiah 19:5). Baalism was around in the 14th century BC in Palestine, so it was deeply rooted.
Because Israel did not completely eradicate the Canaanites as God instructed, they remained to be a strong temptation to the Jews. Israelites not only learned their ways, they intermarried with them!....a sure guarantee of apostasy.
Baalism was popular and attractive because they needed rain, fertile soil and abundant crops. Also, the sensuous nature of Baal worship had strong appeal to the lower nature.
Thus, the stage was set for Ephraim to desert Jehovah-God. Her king was utterly under the sway of his satanic wife. It was a death sentence to be a prophet of Jehovah, and there were features about Baal worship that satisfied one’s libidinous nature. Worshipers of Jehovah were hunted, harassed and hectored. Obadiah secretly saved 100 of these prophets of Jehovah alive in caves and provided them with victuals.
Most Jews in Ephraim were in a spiritual torpor, with no knowledge of their danger, and no desire or concern for the true God. Their spiritual temperature was moribund.
God got Ephraim’s attention through a devastating three-year drought, which began by the word of Elijah. However, even this devastating and debilitating judgment did not cure Ahab or his subjects of their apostasy. It took the supernatural and miraculous intervention of God’s power on Mt. Carmel in a fascinating contest between the 450 prophets of Baal and a solitary Elijah to reach their stubborn hearts.
The fanatical cries of Baal’s prophets brought conspicuous silence from Heaven. Even their blood gushing all over the altar brought no results. When the time of the evening sacrifice arrived, Elijah stood forth, repaired the altar, had the sacrifice doused with water and prayed in the audience of the Israelites for fire to consume his sacrifice. Like a bolt of lightning, God sent fire that consumed the sacrifice, and even the stones of the altar. Israel responded in faith by proclaiming Jehovah was God after witnessing this amazing display of God’s power.
Elijah presided over the slaughter of all 450 priests of Baal, and prayed for rain, which arrived as a deluge.
Though Israel was now temporarily on the side of Jehovah, a vindictive Jezebel was filled with murderous rage and threatened to kill Elijah. Consequently, he escaped into the wilderness of Southern Israel where God met with him in a miraculous display of power. But, in a still small voice He instructed his prophet that he was not all alone. As pervasive as the apostasy was, there were still 7000 whom had not bowed the knee or kissed Baal (1 Kings 19:18).
Please note this stunning declaration of God to Elijah. Paul repeats this incident in Romans 11:4.Seven thousand was a small number in comparison to the whole kingdom, but God’s remnant according to the election of grace (Romans 11:5) is always small. It was not from their virtue or innate goodness that they were a part of the remnant, God did it. They were not chosen because they were not idolaters, they were not idolaters because they were chosen.
God kept them from the contagion of apostasy. There were God’s hidden ones (Psalm 83:3). The visible body of belief was scarcely recognizable, as one man has said: the wheat was lost in the chaff, the gold covered by the dross. Until the sifting and refining day arrives, we will not know all God’s people, but He does.
God’s own peculiar people exist in the worst of times, in unexpected places. They are hidden treasures in Obadiah’s caves, invisible to us, but they are there. In danger, they are in concealment, hidden from the sanguinary attacks of the Jezebels of this world. God knows them by number and by name.
These precious 7000 souls did not just believe in their hearts, they would not kiss, adore or worship Baal! Their actions proved their remnant status; they were undefiled.
Apostasy is rife in our age, and persecution of true faith has begun. Toleration of believers is waning, and now to be an outspoken believer makes you to be suspect by a Christ-rejecting world. In this spiritual degeneration and decline, Bible believers may well be as Elijah: isolated, alone and discouraged. We may not know or recognize other believers, but they are there, and they are being supernaturally strengthened and protected by our great God. The Lord can preserve His people in the most difficult of times.
If you are part of a Christ-honoring, Bible-teaching church, rejoice! They are rapidly disappearing as compromise and apostasy invents its facsimile of Baalism in our day. False religion and compromised “churches” abound as God’s 7000 gather in ever smaller circles. We are not yet being hunted down and slaughtered by Jezebel’s spiritual descendants, but can that be far away as we witness the breathtaking apostasy that has occurred in the last several decades?
No matter what the spiritual atmosphere, no matter what form Baalism takes, no matter who are Jezebel’s descendants, it is our duty to remain faithful, though we are called to do so all alone. We may not be used of God to call down fire from Heaven, but we can remain faithful.
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