Total Rights of Christ the King

The Gospel According to Saint Ahab

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Science

Lesson: The Gospel According to Saint Ahab

Genre:

Track: 02

Dictation Name: RR191A2

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

[Narrative] Our scripture this evening is taken from the 18th chapter of 1 Kings, which is the well known and important account of the encounter on Mount Carmel between the prophet Elijah and King Ahab of Israel. We’ll begin the reading with the 17th verse.

“And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim. Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table.

So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel. And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord; but Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: and call ye on the name of your gods (notice that’s in the plural there), and I will call on the name of the Lord: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken.

And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under. And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made.

And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. And it came to pass, when midday was past, and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.

And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the Lord came, saying, Israel shall be thy name: and with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord: and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed. And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood. And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time. And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.

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. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.”

Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.” Let us now bow in prayer.

In this evening hour, Almighty God, the Living God who has made the covenants of which the scriptures speak, the God of the prophets and the God of the Apostles, and we believe the God of our heritage, the God of early America, and the only true and living God who, for whom all flesh must come and before whom all things are known. Grant us to know, in this hour, that the religion of Baal is still present, and that as was spoken in days gone by, by the prophet, so it must be spoken again to the people, how long can you go halting between two opinions. If Baal be God, then serve him, but if the Lord be God, let him be served, and we pray tonight that, in this hour that thou would make known to us, to all the people for the days to come, the significance and the finality of this issue and this choice, and grant us grace that we may not be bound by the past except as a firm foundation that we may see thy grace in the days to come, that thy power and thy blessing might rest upon each family and each individual, near and far, within the circle of this Gospel and across this nation, and may there be an unveiling of the greatness and the glory of the Son of God, and his redemption for his sake and in his name. Amen.

We’re happy to welcome into this pulpit, and to this church, and to this conference, Rousas John Rushdoony, who is certainly not a stranger to you that have traveled to this conference for the purpose of hearing him and the other men on the program.

Rousas Rushdoony was a missionary for ten years to the Indians. Also, he has served in different pastorates. He has lectured to various colleges and university campuses on specially chosen subjects. He has also lectured before state representatives and their houses. He is the author of a number of books on various subjects in history, and philosophy, and education, and theology, but most of all, is a servant of God, sent to preach his word. It gives us great joy to welcome him back to this pulpit to bring the message to you in this hour.

[Rushdoony] Our subject this evening is The Gospel According to St. Ahab. Certainly, this is a curious title to give to Ahab. We are not in the habit of thinking of the son of Omri as a saint, but perhaps it would clarify our thinking if we called him that for awhile at least. After all, if the average church member today, including the church members in many a Bible-believing church can be called a saint, so can Ahab.

As we look at the life of Ahab, we see first of all, that Ahab was a man of prayer, and God answered his prayer. Turn, for example, to 1 Kings 21:27 following. “And it came to pass, when Ahab heard those words, that he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly. And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me? because he humbleth himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days: but in his son's days will I bring the evil upon his house.”

In other words, there was an intensity, a passion to Ahab’s prayer. This in itself is a remarkable fact, and we would have to say that not many preachers of our day have prayed with the intensity that Ahab obviously did in this case.

Then, second, we must say that on the whole, Ahab avoided personal involvement with sin. He was not, as far as we know from scripture, an adulterer, for example. Probably because he was afraid of his wife like many another man. Neither was he openly profane, nor openly in violation of God’s law. True, he did not interfere when his wife had Naboth legally murdered and then stripped of his possessions. He was ready to profit by it, but we must say that there is many a man today who is a church-goer who is ready to profit by the evil that his company, or his country, or his friends or relative perpetrate. He doesn’t want to get his hands dirtied, but he’s ready to profit by the evil, as long as somebody else does the evil work. But there was a personal avoidance of sin on Ahab’s part.

Then third, we must say that Ahab always thought of himself as a believer, not as an apostate. He always thought of himself as a Jehovah worshiper. To understand him better, let us look at his wife, Jezebel. Jezebel was a Baal worshiper. Now, to understand Baal worship, we must realize, first of all, that there was no god named Baal. There were Baalim, but the Baalim were not necessarily gods. A Baal could be a god, but the word Baal can be translated as “lord,” as “master,” and in fact, as “husband.” What was Baalism?

Baalism was an acknowledgment that there were powers around you that you had to deal with, that the wise man, the circumspect man, was the man who walked in awareness that you had to, at this point or that point, give in to the powers that be. The Baal, or Baalim, that you had to reckon with, could be political. It could be the powers above you. It could be your husband or your wife. It could be your relatives, your employer. It could be natural forces and it could be gods, including Jehovah. It meant simply that you walked circumspectly, recognizing that you had to make a little compromise here and a little compromise there. In other words, what Baalism said was that the wise man reckoned with the powers around him, and walked, mindful of the fact that life involved a certain amount of compromise. A Baalist could worship an actual idol, or any number of idols, but basically, Baalism was compromise with the powers around one, a belief that you could not be single-minded, that you could not give unswerving, unfaltering allegiance to one lord.

As a result, when we think of Baalism in the northern kingdom, Israel, what we must realize is that the northern kingdom never openly forsook Jehovah worship. Now, the southern kingdom, Judah, was often apostate. Then, it would return to the faith. There was more hope for the southern kingdom, because it was either openly forsaking the Lord, or it was serving the Lord. The northern kingdom, Israel, never saw itself as apostate. Never. It was always syncretistic. That is, it professed Jehovah worship, but at all times, it compromised that with practical considerations, and this is why, in the sight of God, the northern kingdom was so evil. This was the great evil of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who caused Israel to sin.

When Jeroboam the son of Nebat erected a sanctuary apart from the sanctuary in Jerusalem, it was for political reasons. He was fearful of the people continue to go south to Jerusalem to worship, their allegiance to himself would ultimately be replaced by an allegiance to the Sons of David who ruled in Jerusalem, and therefore, he created new sanctuaries, and to give a new focus to worship, he set in those sanctuaries bull calves, as images, but called them at the same time, sanctuaries of Jehovah. Now, the images represented the forces of nature. He was, in a sense, saying, What these people round about us, these pagans worship in the forces of nature, is simply blind worship. They’re really worshipping the power of God.

Now, there is an element of truth in this, but a greater element of lie. They were not worshipping the true God. They had forsaken him, and they were worshiping the creature rather than the creator, but Jeroboam’s purpose was political. It was pragmatic, and he led Israel into syncretism, into a religion of compromise, into a religion which, to the last, was formally the worship of Jehovah, but practically filled with so much compromise that it was a false religion, and this is why in that tradition, Ahab could think of himself as a Jehovah worshiper, and yet tolerate Jezebel. After all, if you have a mixed religion, you’re going to have mixed marriages, and you’re going to be tolerant of them, and after all, if you are compromising at one point, you may not agree with murder, but if your wife gets involved with murder you may not like it. It’s dirty business, but it is going to be pretty hard for you to object to it, and this is our problem today, is it not? There is so much compromise on all sides, that people cannot come with clean hands to a place of judgment.

About a year or so ago, in California, I spoke a couple of times, and I said that the corruption today was not merely in the judges and in the courts, but in the people. This is why, I said, the juries are so ready to turn people loose, because they know how much sin and guilt there is in their own hearts, in their own lives, and in their families, and they’re unwilling to convict. I had a few people disagree with me both times when I spoke on that subject, but within a matter of days, I was called by some of them to apologize. One man, a government official, said, “Our top executive,” and this is in a branch of the Pentagon in California, “was on jury duty recently, and he voted ‘not guilty’ in the jury, and they turned loose somebody in a case where it was obvious what the man was and what he had done, and when I confronted my supervisor with what he had done, he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Well, after all, it could be any one of us. It could be my son the next time. I just couldn’t see sending him to prison.’” It wasn’t the facts of the case that led his to say, “Not guilty.” It was his own sense of guilt and the recognition that his son might be next, and I had that same incident reported a little later by someone else who talked to someone who had been on a jury.

Ahab thought of himself as a believer, as a saint of God, but like so many others, like this supervisor who regarded himself as a God-fearing man, there was too much compromise in him to deal with Jezebel, or to deal with anything in terms of the word of God.

No doubt, if we could talk to Ahab, if we were suddenly transported back into his day, and asked him about his problems, he would have sighed and told us what a trial this sovereign grace preacher Elijah was, such an extremist, you know. Why, if you were to believe Elijah, there wasn’t another Christian in the land, another believer in the Lord. We know that Elijah felt that way. In fact, he told the Lord, “I, even I, am left. I alone.” He didn’t know of another one. God assured him that he had his 7,000. Not literally that number, but seven is the number of fullness. There were his elect who had not bowed the knee to Baal, who had not compromised, but Elijah had not met any of them yet, but Ahab would have been indignant at the idea that this sovereign grace preacher was unchurching him, was accusing him of being an ungodly man. Why if you’d believe Ahab, there weren’t any believers in the land except himself, and for Ahab, that was bad preaching, and he regarded, Ahab did, Elijah as a man, who troubled Israel, who was an extremist. Oh, there were problems in the land, for sure. There were problems in the church, the church of his day, but nothing that reasonable men couldn’t work out, and after all, this isn’t heaven. Why was Elijah such an extremist, causing so much trouble? This was the religion of Ahab, a religion of compromise.

You see, the principle of Baalism had saturated him even though he was formally a Jehovah worshiper. The principle of Baalism was that man and man’s needs had to be faced realistically, that the only real religion was a practical religion, a religion that didn’t lead you to a position where you were uncompromising and foolish. Where could you get in a real world acting that way? Well, exactly where we are today. Exactly where Ahab was in the sight of God, under judgment. This was the gospel then, according to St. Ahab, a religion which halted between two opinions and this was the challenge of Elijah. As he confronted the men of the nation, and Ahab, on the one side were the prophets or preachers of Baal, 450. That’s not many. Behind them in the capitol, Jezebel. In between, himself alone, and the 450 prophets of Baal with Jezebel in the capitol was Ahab and the nation, formerly Jehovah worshipers, but halting as he said, between two opinions, and thus, his challenge to them on that day unmistakably was, “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.”

You know, the situation then was no different than it is now and has been through the ages. The nation dominated by Jezebel and 450 prophets of Baal, and against them all alone, Elijah. History has never been dominated by majorities. That is the democratic fallacy, the democratic error. Majorities have never dominated history, only dedicated minorities. The communists know this. They know that all they need to dominate any organization, any institution, any country, is one percent who are knowledgeable and dedicated, and nine percent who will follow them, and the only thing then that can prevent them from taking over is if there is another one percent and nine percent following at the other end. Did you know that when the Puritans took over England, they were only four percent of the population? Four percent, and today, those who profess to be Bible-believing Christians are 25% of the United States. Something is wrong. Something is wrong. They follow the Gospel according to St. Ahab. They are for the Lord, up to a point. They want a practice religion.

Not too long ago, a young man who came to a saving knowledge of Christ as a result of our Chalcedon ministry, telephoned me and he said, “You know I’ve joined a Reformed church here, and they are telling me that I’m way off base, in fact, that I’m crazy to follow people like yourself and Van Til, and when I asked them why, they say, ‘Oh, it isn’t that Rushdoony and Van Til are wrong in what they say, but they go to such extremes with it, and that’s ridicules.’” In other words, be a Christian, but not too much.

That reminds me, of course, of the kind of prayer Augustine made before he was converted. Augustine was brought up in a home where the father was an ungodly man and the mother was a Christian who spent years praying for her son’s conversion. Augustine dabbled with every kind of religion because he was trying to run away from God, and finally he found himself praying, he said in his Confessions, and he realized what his prayers were. He was praying, “Lord, make me pure, but not yet.” He wanted to be the Lord’s man, but he didn’t want to give up his life. He was enjoying it, so he wanted both. “Lord make me pure, but not yet,” and it was the shock of the realization of what he was praying for that brought him to his knees, truly to his knees, but that’s the kind of religion that so many want. That’s the gospel according to St. Ahab. You see, the world by and large, doesn’t like the prophets of Baal, nor does it like Ahab. It does not like the lie. The lie is so obviously dangerous, bad, but it doesn’t like the same kind of unreserved commitment to the truth. Why be an extremist? Why go all the way?

You see, we cannot understand what happened in the 1960’s to college youth, unless we understand this fact. During the sixties especially, I was on many college and university campuses, sometimes sixteen, eighteen in a year. Secular campuses. It was very interesting to talk to these young men. They were sometimes bitter and savage in their hostility to what I had to say, but there was this one thing that came through. In their reaction, their hatred against the Establishment, the government, the state, their parents, everything, they resented the total spirit of compromise they felt marked the Establishment, the unwillingness to give any real commitment to anything. Now sadly, they opted for the lie, but they gave it unreserved commitment, and their bitterness, their hostility, was against the world of compromise, the world of halting between two opinions. It’s tragic that the witness they made against compromise was made not by the ministers of Jesus Christ, and by the people of God, but by those who had sold themselves into a lie.

What they were revolting against was, really, the gospel according to St. Ahab, and this is why so many of their professors were bewildered. I know that on some of these campuses, the faculty and the administration were totally bewildered. Why are they against us? At Isla Vista in Santa Barbara, the bank president, Bank of America said, “Why have they attacked us? Don’t they know we’re as liberal as they are?” and the students laughed at that, because they knew that all that the liberalism that was professed by the bank officials was to be in with the times. It was a part of their pragmatic philosophy, their opportunism, that there was no real commitment to anything, except compromise, and this is why they attacked those, really, who were in some respects, closest to them in profession. The gospel according to St. Ahab thus, is very much with us. It is the gospel that our Lord attacked when he wrote his letter to the Laodiceans, the one of the seven epistles in Revelations that is total condemnation. “Because thou art neither hot nor cold but lukewarm, I will spew thee (or in modern English, I will vomit) thee out of my mouth.” Our Lord regarded them as repulsive because they were lukewarm, because they were given to compromise, because they would not come out clearly for good or evil, and remember his condemnation of compromising cities in his ministry. “That it will be better for Sodom and Gomorrah on the Day of Judgment than for you.” Sodom and Gomorrah were clearly what they were, that those cities had the spirit of Ahab, and the church of Laodicea believed in the gospel of its St. Ahab, a gospel of compromise, of halting between two opinions. Yes, Ahab, when he was pushed to desperation was an intense man of prayer, but the rest of his life, he was a man of compromise, halting between two opinions.

The gospel according to St. Ahab is the gospel of the church today. This is why our country is in the condition it is. It is wrong for us to look at the radical groups and the criminal groups, and the rioters and all these people and say, “Terrible, terrible what they’re doing to the nation.” There has always been evil in the midst of men. The difference is that today, we cannot control it, because we ourselves do not stand clearly as a Christian people in terms of the word of God. If one-tenth of the people who profess to be Bible-believing Christians stood clearly and unequivocally in terms of what they profess to believe, this country could be turned around and then would be a God-fearing nation within a few years.

On the plane coming here, I saw the statistics concerning tithing. Only three percent of the church members of the country tithe, and they justify, the 97%, their failure to tithe by a variety of reasons that are derived straight out of the gospel according to St. Ahab. God declares over and over again his requirement. It’s his tax, that you’re not giving a gift until you give above and over a tithe, but we have some who actually tell us that, “Well, it’s being legalistic, and we’re now in the gospel age and not under laws,” though Christians have a license to be less holy than Old Testament believers. No real commitment. A halting between two opinions. Being for the Lord with our Lord, and for ourselves with our pocketbook, and so the word of God confronts us today. We cannot blame those who are prophets of Baal. We’ll always have them. We’ll always have our hoodlums. What will determine today and tomorrow, is the stand those who call upon Christ will take. Will they stand with Ahab, halting, or with Elijah, and the Lord? Where do you stand? Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, thy word is truth, and thy word summons us to give unto thee with all our heart, mind, and being, our love, our obedience, our substance, our all. O Lord, our God, be merciful unto us, that so often we have given thee only the leftovers of our lives, and have expected thee to be grateful when we have withheld from thee ourselves, and our substance. Our Lord and our God, give us the faith of Elijah. Teach us by thy word. Instruct the reins of our hearts that, without reservation, we may obey thee, that we may believe thy word, and follow thee without reservation with all our heart, mind, and being. Thou hast promised, O Lord, to bless thy people, that when thy people call upon thee, when they yield unto thee the obedience of faith, and tithes, and offerings, thy blessings will pursue and overwhelm thy people, even as now thy judgment is pursuing and overwhelming us. O Lord our God, by thy grace, make us a faithful people, in Jesus name. Amen.