3.186 Elijah the Prophet

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello, my friends, it's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve. I testify of living prophets and apostles of God on the earth today.

My friends, we are wrapping up our reading in 1 Kings 12 and 13 and really just the rest of 1 Kings here. And as I tried, I just couldn't get out of 1 Kings 18. So you're going to have to finish the rest of our readings because inside of 1 Kings 18, not only do we have my favorite in the Old Testament, Elijah, we also are going to see something a bit different in the wording and the text.

The following is a story about Elijah challenges the false priests, 450 I believe if I'm correct, to basically a duel of calling upon God. Like, let's see your miracles from your God, and then I'll show you mine. And inside of this back and forth, not only does Elijah have some of his sarcasm in there that I told you I'm a little bit of a fan of, but ultimately when this verse came across to me, I was like, "Wait a second, is that different?" And so let me share it with you and see what you think about it. 1 Kings 18, verse 36, is our verse for today.

And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, "Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel, and that I am Thy servant, and that I have done all these things at Thy word." Now we have this moment where Elijah is going to pray to the Lord. And it's interesting to me that this verse reads Elijah the prophet. And even over to the previous chapters where Elijah's name is mentioned, I couldn't find that phrase again; I couldn't see another place where it said "Elijah the prophet." And it got me thinking, what was it about this verse that separated Elijah's actions from the others?

I mean, in the chapter before, in chapter 17, we had miracles performed by Elijah, but they didn't have to be defined as "Elijah the prophet." And then we get to this one, major one, and it's defined, "Elijah the prophet." It got me thinking about a talk, perhaps you remember it. It was, well, it's been a while, October of 2010 by Elder Claudio R. M.

Costa. I'm actually not going to link to this talk for you. I'm going to link to the one that he references basically. And so the link that you're going to get is "14 Fundamentals in Following the Prophet." My friends, I hope you have time or I hope you will take time to listen to President Benson define these 14 fundamental principles in following the prophet.