Good morning to you!
Many of you last week responded and asked questions about why I chose the title “Truth Demands A Choice” for my Sunday postings, and today I want to explain my reasoning behind it. I feel it is very important for you to understand why I am writing these posts, and the purpose that I have in taking time out of  my evenings to write.
For over a year I have written on how to preserve things, build up your self-sufficiency skills, take care of your family in a time of disaster. I have shared with you our triumphs and failures, and am thankful for that time and opportunity to pour into your lives.
But I also have a great burden on my heart, and that is to share with you that no matter how SELF prepared you are, you have nothing if you have not dealt with what happens after you leave here and pass on.
I have talked about this with my radio interviews, and within my posts, and that is simply that, if you choose to reject Jesus Christ as your Lord, there is nothing left  but death and destruction eventually.
My pastor a couple weeks ago gave a sermon on  one of my very favorite passages, and after coming home, I knew I needed to use that passage as a basis for the things I would be writing about over the coming weeks. It can be found in 1 Kings 18, and encompasses the spectacular battle between ignorance and truth, between an evil King and Queen, and minions, and a single prophet of the Lord.
Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? Let me give you a little more background.
We have, most of us, heard of the wicked queen Jezebel, and associate the name with wickedness in our minds, but many of us without knowing much about her or why we do that. Dont believe me? Check the names on the birth registry and see how many people name their beautiful baby girls Jezebel. Not many. This queen was as wicked as they came, and she was married to a King (Ahab) who in the words of the Scripture was termed as “a king who did more evil in the sight of the Lord than any other king before him.”. Here is the leader of the “people of God”, the one who  makes the rules, sets the pace, and he is more wicked than ANY king who has come before him, worshiping anything BUT the Lord, leading the people of Israel into sin, etc. AND then he marries a woman from a tribe that the Lord specifically told the people NOT to marry into because of their brutal disregard for honoring the Lord, and for their personal habits. God did not want his people to intermarry because He knew what would happen. He knew his people would begin to worship other idols and man-made gods in an effort at keeping peace within the family, and it would eventually end in the persecution and destruction of his people.
So, we have a terribly wicked queen and king, who at the point of this story had hunted down all the priests and prophets of the temple that God had set in place and tried to kill every single one. Basically, if you were, by  birthright, a priest or a prophet by calling, there was a bounty on your head, and you would be put to immediate death (if you were lucky–torturous death if you were not).
Enter into the picture Elijah, a simple  man who was called into the prophetic ministry of speaking to the King and Queen about the path they were taking God’s nation on, and to the people for rejecting the Lord’s commands and following in their steps of destruction. The King and Queen were very familiar with him, hated him in fact, because three years previous to this story, he had told them bluntly that until the nation repented and turned back to the Lord, there would be a great drought, and no rain. They promptly put a bounty on his head and he had to hide for his life, letting the Lord direct him to places where there was water and food for that ensuing time. And the Lord did exactly as Elijah had prophesied, drying up the lakes, the rivers, and eventually the land, making the people realize that their actions had consequences. Drastic ones.
However, instead of recognizing their ownership of the relation between the fulfillment of the prophecies and their situations, instead they began to blame Elijah for his actions, none more than King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. You see, that is what wickedness does, and how easy it is to take a step in the wrong direction…eventually to end up blaming someone, ANYONE for the consequences of the choices that you make. Sound familiar?
So that is where we are starting with the scripture today, 1 Kings 18: ” After many months passed, in the third year of the drought, the Lord said to Elijah: ‘Go and present yourself to King Ahab. Tell him that I will soon send rain!” So Elijah went to present himself to Ahab. Meanwhile, the famine had become very severe in Samaria, so