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MOUNTAINTOP LOYALTY: THE ELIJAH EXPERIENCE #10
THE GOOD EXECUTION
There’s a stunning conclusion or denouement to the top-of-Mount Carmel Elijah story we’ve been studying together these past two weeks. If you’ve been with us, or if you’ve ever hiked your way through I Kings 18, you know how the God of heaven triumphed over Baal and the 450 false prophets of Baal. After a day of screaming and shouting uselessly at the barren sky, the prophets had retired to the sidelines and watched in sullen silence as Elijah’s God answered his prayer with an instantaneous lightning bolt of consuming fire. It’s a classic showdown, and the forces of Baal lost big-time.
And now we come to the jolting result of this contest. God has won, of course, and the people all bow down to worship. In fact, verse 39 paints the picture for us:
“When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, ‘The Lord — He is God! The Lord — He is God!’”
But now a plot twist hits us right in the gut. Because do you know what happens next? Listen to verse 40:
“Then Elijah commanded them, “Seize the prophets of Baal. Don’t let anyone get away!’ They seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there.”
They literally killed all 450 of those false prophets right there. And you talk about a party-stopper! This is just moments after a great spiritual triumph for God — and it ends with 450 executions.
And we have to ask: Why? Why does God need to win in such a way? Doesn’t heaven value free choice? Aren’t people free to choose God or to choose the other side? And we finish this Mount Carmel story by wondering: “Is this the gospel message of Jehovah: ‘Worship only Me or I’ll have you slaughtered down by the river’?”
Well, friend, this is the kind of story that finds its way into books like “Hard Stories of the Bible.” What’s the answer? Is God a bloodthirsty butcher who won’t tolerate dissent?
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t preach about this Kishon Valley execution any more times than I have to . . . but it certainly is an important part of this Elijah Experience, and honesty requires that we deal with it. But if you’ll let me, I’d like to segue over to a story that happened much more recently, and with exactly the same results.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the love story of Julie and Ethel. Now, before you get nervous, “Julie” was a nickname for “Julius,” and this young, politically minded couple fell in love at a union hall meeting, New Year’s Eve, 1935. They were both progressive liberals, both members of the Communist Party here in the United States. Both friendly with Russia, which, of course, was an ally during World War II. Julius, the son of a Polish garment worker in New York, was a quiet, serious kid who had an interest in Hebrew studies. But he never became a rabbi like his father hoped; instead he got a civilian job with the U.S. Army Signal Corps as an electrical engineer. And before too long he found himself in a position where he could pass Manhattan Project research secrets along from the Los Alamos labs to the Soviet Union. His brother-in-law, David Greenglass, had access to details about America’s atomic bomb project, and Julius finally persuaded him to join him in selling out his country. “It was like plunging into a cold lake,” David said later when he confessed to the FBI what he had done.
On July 17, 1950, government agents put handcuffs on Julius Rosenberg and arrested him for being a traitor to his country; a month later, as she was walking to catch a subway, they also apprehended Ethel. The trial was a huge media event here in the U.S., with defense attorney Emanuel Bloch trying desperately to save his two clients, these passionate young lovers who seemed to love their political cause even more than they loved their own children. Neither one was willing to plea-bargain at all, or cooperate in any fashion, in order to get a reduced sentence, and the country listened in fascination to the prosecution’s stories about Jell-o boxes used as espionage recognition signals and how the Rosenbergs would burn incriminating notes in a frying pan. I don’t know if you’ll recall the name of this prosecuting attorney — Irving Saypol — but he had successfully convicted Alger Hiss for the same crime. And with the Rosenbergs not saying anything in their own defense, it took just one month for Saypol to win convictions against both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage against the United States of America. The jury of 11 men and one woman deliberated for just a few hours before returning the guilty verdict. These many years later, you can get on the Internet and read the entire story; in fact, just back in 1995, decoded communications documents, the “Venona Cables,” released by the CIA, clearly established Julius Rosenberg’s complicity. As recently as 1997, a Soviet spy named Aleksandr Feklisov stepped forward and admitted that he had dealt regularly with Rosenberg — “Liberal,” he was code-named — between 1943 and 1946.
And if you’re a history buff at all, you know what the judge’s ruling in the matter was going to be. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to die in the electric chair. Why? What had they done that was really so terrible? Judge Irving Kaufman stepped before a packed courtroom and a watching world and had this to say to the idealistic couple who had given secrets to the enemy:
“I consider your crime worse than murder. Plain deliberate contemplated murder is dwarfed in magnitude by comparison with the crime you have committed. In committing the act of murder, the criminal kills only his victim. The immediate family is brought to grief and when justice is meted out the chapter is closed. But in your case, I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country.”
Well, the wheels of justice spun down to the final moments. A plea for clemency went clear up to the Supreme Court, which lost by the agonizingly close vote of 5-4, with sons Robert and Michael carrying signs: “Don’t Kill My Mommy and Daddy.” That was on June 19, 1953, and that same evening, at 8:00 p.m., both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sat down in Sing Sing Prison’s electric chair, Ethel being the first woman executed by the U.S. Government since Mary Surratt was hanged after the Civil War for participating in the assassination plot on Lincoln.
Now friend, let me say something. This is just plain a bloody, awful story. The idea of strapping down 37-year-old Ethel Rosenberg and electrocuting her to death is grotesque. It’s a bloody mess. What happened to those 450 priests of Baal down in the Kishon Valley was a bloody, wretched mess. I absolutely HATE the death penalty, and I’m sure you do too. No reasonable person LIKES the concept of execution, whether for murder or mass betrayal or Oklahoma City bombings or 9/11 or any other imaginable crime. But the plain fact of history, and of biblical reality, is this: when a person’s treason, his or her flagrant DISLOYALTY, causes many people to lose their lives, that is a very serious matter. When you not only sell out the principles of your government, of the kingdom you live in, of the country that is defending you and providing for you . . . but you betray that nation in a way that leads directly to the destruction of others — an execution by the Kishon Valley, or in the United States Government’s lethal injection death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, is just about the only option left.
We’ve borrowed some great sound bites from the 19th-century book, Prophets and Kings, and the author, E. G. White, has this to say about loyalty:
“The Lord abhors indifference and disloyalty in a time of crisis in His work. The whole universe is watching with inexpressible interest the closing scenes of the great controversy between good and evil. The people of God are nearing the borders of the eternal world; what can be of more importance to them than that they be LOYAL to the God of heaven?”
That’s really what this entire Elijah story is about: loyalty. “Choose ye this day.” “How long halt ye between two opinions?” And those 450 priests of Baal were so blatantly disloyal to the God of heaven who ruled over the nation they lived in, and were so blatantly betraying thousands of innocent Israelite citizens into spiritual ruin, that Elijah was entirely correct in bringing down the gavel on their very lives as the sun went down that day. In order to protect the innocent. The Adventist Bible Commentary puts it in exactly those terms:
“Elijah’s summary execution of these priests was a fearful vengeance, but it was necessary and showed God’s indignation against those who persist in rebellion, AND who are willing to corrupt and demoralize an entire people for selfish ends.”
It’s painful to realize, but sometimes a bloody, awful moment is actually the only kind option a judge has left.
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