BibleBlox
32. burning altar
/ 1 kings 18 /
/ listen as you follow along /
Many people in Israel were following a false god named Baal. 🐂 The king 👑 of Israel, 🇮🇱 named Ahab, and his wife Jezebel, had told everyone to worship Baal instead of the true God. Elijah knew this was wrong 😑 and wanted to show everyone the real, powerful God.
Elijah went to King 👑 Ahab and said, "Let's have a special contest to see whose God is real!" The king agreed, and all the people gathered on a big, tall mountain 🏔️ called Mount Carmel. There were 450 prophets of Baal on one side, and Elijah stood alone on the other side.
Elijah said to the people, "We will each build 🧱 an altar, and we'll ask our god to send fire 🔥 from the sky. 🌌 The god who answers with fire is the true God!" The Baal prophets went first. They built their altar and started calling on Baal. 🐂 They danced 🕺 and jumped and shouted from morning until noon. They even started cutting themselves to show how much they wanted Baal to answer, but nothing happened.
Elijah started to tease 😜 them a little. "Maybe your god is sleeping!" 😴 he said. "Or maybe he's gone on a trip!" The Baal prophets got more and more excited, but still, no fire came.
Then it was Elijah's turn. But he did something extra special to make the miracle even more amazing. He told the people to pour big buckets of water 💦 all over his altar - not just once, but three times! The wood 🪵 was so wet that water 💧 ran all around the altar and filled a big trench around it.
Elijah looked up to heaven and prayed 🙏 a simple prayer: "God, please show everyone that you are the real God!"
Suddenly - BOOM! - 💥 a huge fire 🔥 came down from the sky! It was so powerful that it burned up not just the wood, 🪵 but the stones, 🪨 the dirt, and even licked up all the 💦 in the trench! The people were amazed and shocked!
All the people fell down 🙇 and shouted, "The Lord is the true God! 🙌 The Lord is the true God!" They finally understood that Elijah's God was the one real and powerful 💪 God who could do incredible things.
31. elijah / 32. burning altar / 33. elisha
