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The Story of Jezebel _ Powerful Bible Story of Power_ Corruption _ Judgment · truthunedited

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  Speaker 1: What if I told you that one of the most
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  Speaker 1: powerful rulers in the Bible never sat on a throne,
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  Speaker 1: and was a woman the entire kingdom feared more than
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  Speaker 1: any king. What if I told you she arrived in
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  Speaker 1: Israel as a foreign princess, smiling at her royal wedding,
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  Speaker 1: and within a few short years had filled the land
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  Speaker 1: with strange altars and hunted down God's prophets one by one.
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  Speaker 1: What if I told you she could forge a king's signature,
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  Speaker 1: invent a crime, and have an innocent man executed for
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  Speaker 1: nothing more than a vineyard he refused to sell. They
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  Speaker 1: called her seductive, They called her ruthless. They called her
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  Speaker 1: the most dangerous force ever to stand beside a throne.
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  Speaker 1: Yet what almost no one remembers is the prophecy spoken
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  Speaker 1: decades before her death that described her final moment in
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  Speaker 1: chilling detail. How does a woman like this rise so high?
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  Speaker 1: And what could possibly bring her down so completely that
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  Speaker 1: in the end almost nothing of her was ever found.
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  Speaker 1: This is the story of Jezebel. Her name was Jezebel,
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  Speaker 1: and she did not belong to Israel. She came from
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  Speaker 1: somewhere else, from a far away coast of ships, traders,
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  Speaker 1: and foreign gods. And to understand her you have to
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  Speaker 1: begin where she began. The Bible introduces her almost without warning.
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  Speaker 1: In the First Book of Kings, chapter sixteen and verse
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  Speaker 1: thirty one, we are told that the King of Israel
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  Speaker 1: took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbal, king of
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  Speaker 1: the Zidonians. That single line carries more weight than it
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  Speaker 1: first appears. Look closely at who she was. She was
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  Speaker 1: a princess. Her father was a king, Ethbal, ruler of
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  Speaker 1: the Zidonians. The people of Saidon. Saidon sat on the
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  Speaker 1: shore of the Great Sea north of Israel, a city
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  Speaker 1: of sailors and merchants, a place that knew gold and
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  Speaker 1: trade and power. It was a proud city used to
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  Speaker 1: getting its used to bowing to no one. But Sidon
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  Speaker 1: did not know the God of Israel. The people of
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  Speaker 1: that coast bowed down to bail a false god of
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  Speaker 1: the nations around them. They had their idols and their altars,
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  Speaker 1: their feasts and their prayers, all aimed at gods that
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  Speaker 1: could not see, could not hear, and could not save.
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  Speaker 1: That was the here Jezebel breathed from her first day.
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  Speaker 1: That was the only kind of worship. She had ever
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  Speaker 1: known the God who had led Israel out of Egypt,
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  Speaker 1: who had split the sea, who had spoken from the
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  Speaker 1: mountain in fire, who had given his law to his people.
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  Speaker 1: That God was a stranger to her. She had not
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  Speaker 1: grown up hearing his promises. She had not been taught
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  Speaker 1: to fear his name. To her, he was simply one
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  Speaker 1: more god among many, and not even her own. So
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  Speaker 1: picture her clearly. She was not a simple village girl.
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  Speaker 1: She was royalty, raised in a palace shaped by a
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  Speaker 1: kingdom that served other gods. She carried the pride of
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  Speaker 1: a princess and the faith of a foreign land in
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  Speaker 1: her heart. Everything she had been taught, everything she believed,
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  Speaker 1: everything she trusted, stood against the very thing Israel was
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  Speaker 1: supposed to be. And there is one more thing to
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  Speaker 1: understand about her. A princess of Sidon was not raised
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  Speaker 1: to bend or to obey. She was raised to rule,
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  Speaker 1: to give orders to be served. She had grown up
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  Speaker 1: watching her father's word become law, watching a kingdom move
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  Speaker 1: at the lift of a royal hand. That habit of
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  Speaker 1: command was stitched into her from childhood. She did not
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  Speaker 1: know how to be small, and she had no plans
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  Speaker 1: to learn, that is the woman who was about to
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  Speaker 1: cross the border into the land of God's people, not
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  Speaker 1: as a guest, not as a quiet bride who would
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  Speaker 1: melt into a new life and take on the faith
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  Speaker 1: of her husband's land, but as a queen with the
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  Speaker 1: weight of her father's kingdom, the pride of her father's throne,
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  Speaker 1: and the gods of her father's peace people all behind her.
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  Speaker 1: To understand how a foreign princess ended up wearing the
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  Speaker 1: crown of Israel, you have to meet the man who
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  Speaker 1: married her and the kind of king he had already become.
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  Speaker 1: His name was Ahab. The Bible tells us in First Kings,
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  Speaker 1: chapter sixteen and verse twenty nine that Ahab, the son
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  Speaker 1: of Omri, began to reign over Israel. His father, Omri,
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  Speaker 1: had built a strong throne and founded a powerful family line.
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  Speaker 1: Ahab inherited all of it, the army, the wealth, the
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  Speaker 1: capital city, the kingdom. He had everything a king could want,
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  Speaker 1: and from the start he set himself on a dark path.
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  Speaker 1: Scripture does not soften it. In the very next verse,
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  Speaker 1: verse thirty, the record says plainly that Ahab, the son
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  Speaker 1: of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord
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  Speaker 1: above all that were before him. Think about that Israel
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  Speaker 1: had already suffered under wicked kings. The nation had seen
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  Speaker 1: rulers who turned away from God and led the people
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  Speaker 1: into sin. Yet Ahab outdid every single one of them.
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  Speaker 1: He climbed to the top of a very dark list.
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  Speaker 1: And it was this king who reached across to the
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  Speaker 1: coast of Sidon and made a deal. In those days,
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  Speaker 1: kings did not marry only for love. They married to
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  Speaker 1: build alliances, to join two kingdoms together, to make their
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  Speaker 1: thrones stronger and their borders safer. A marriage between the
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  Speaker 1: king of Israel and the daughter of the King of
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  Speaker 1: Saidon meant trade flowing between the lands, treaties signed, treasure shared,
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  Speaker 1: and two powerful families bound as one. So Ahab brought
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  Speaker 1: Jezebel home as his wife and his queen. On the surface,
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  Speaker 1: it looked like a clever, even brilliant move. Two kingdoms
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  Speaker 1: tied together, the northern border made secure the riches of
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  Speaker 1: the coast within reach. Any worldly adviser would have called
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  Speaker 1: it wisdom. But noticed what the Bible places side by.
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  Speaker 1: It first tells us Ahab did more evil than any
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  Speaker 1: king before him, and then almost in the same breath,
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  Speaker 1: It tells us he married Jezebel. The two facts are
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  Speaker 1: not separated by accident. The record is showing us, quietly
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  Speaker 1: and on purpose, that this marriage was not a side
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  Speaker 1: note to his evil. It was part of it. A
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  Speaker 1: door swung wide open, a choice that would echo through
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  Speaker 1: everything that followed. Israel's throne had welcomed a queen who
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  Speaker 1: served other gods. The alliance was sealed, the wedding was done,
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  Speaker 1: the treaties were signed, and the celebrations were over. And
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  Speaker 1: what came walking through that open door, not loud at first,
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  Speaker 1: not violent, but steady and sure, would reshape the entire
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  Speaker 1: nation from the inside out. To feel the size of
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  Speaker 1: what was about to happen, you have to remember what
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  Speaker 1: Israel was meant to be. Jezebel was stepping into a
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  Speaker 1: kingdom built on one simple, unbreakable rule. That rule had
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  Speaker 1: been spoken long before from a mountain wrapt in smoke
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  Speaker 1: and fire. In the Book of Exodus, chapter twenty and
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  Speaker 1: verse three, God gave his people the very first command,
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  Speaker 1: thou shalt have no other gods before me. It could
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  Speaker 1: not be clearer. One God, no others, no idols, no images,
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  Speaker 1: no rivals. And God did not leave it at that.
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  Speaker 1: In the verses that follow in verse four and verse five,
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  Speaker 1: he went on, thou shalt not make unto thee any
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  Speaker 1: graven image. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them,
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  Speaker 1: nor serve them. For I the Lord thy God, am
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  Speaker 1: a jealous god. Carved images were forbidden, Bowing to them
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  Speaker 1: was forbidden. God claimed his people completely, and he would
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  Speaker 1: not share them. This was the heart of who Israel was.
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  Speaker 1: They were not like the nations around them. Every other
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  Speaker 1: peace had a whole crowd of gods, a different one
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  Speaker 1: for the rain, the harvest, the sea, the storm, the battle.
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  Speaker 1: But Israel was called to belong to the Lord alone.
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  Speaker 1: In the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter six and verse four,
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  Speaker 1: the words ring out like a banner over the nation.
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  Speaker 1: Here O Israel, the Lord, our God is one lord.
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  Speaker 1: That was their identity, that was their covenant. To worship
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  Speaker 1: anyone or anything else was not a small slip. It
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  Speaker 1: was betrayal of the deepest kind. Now bring Jezebel into
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  Speaker 1: that picture. She came from a world that did the
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  Speaker 1: exact opposite of everything Israel stood. For. Where Israel said
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  Speaker 1: one god, her people said many gods. Where Israel bowed
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  Speaker 1: to the Lord alone. She bowed to bal where Israel
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  Speaker 1: had been told never to make an image. Her whole
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  Speaker 1: life had been spent among carved idols and sacred poles.
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  Speaker 1: Two worlds built on two completely opposite ideas about heaven
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  Speaker 1: were living under one roof, in one palace, in one kingdom.
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  Speaker 1: This was never going to stay quiet. A covenant of
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  Speaker 1: one god and a queen of many gods could not
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  Speaker 1: simply share the same land in peace. One of them
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  Speaker 1: would have to give way to the other. And Jezebel
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  Speaker 1: was not the kind of woman to keep her gods
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  Speaker 1: to herself, or to bend her beliefs to fit a
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  Speaker 1: foreign land. When Jezebel left Sidon, she did not leave
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  Speaker 1: her religion behind at the border. She carried it with
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  Speaker 1: her straight into the heart of Israel, and she found
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  Speaker 1: a husband who was all too ready to follow her lead.
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  Speaker 1: Look again at First Kings, chapter sixteen and verse thirty one.
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  Speaker 1: After it names Jezebel the daughter of the king of
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  Speaker 1: the Zidonians, it tells us what happened next. Ahab went
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  Speaker 1: and served Bail and worshiped him. Read those words slowly.
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  Speaker 1: The king of God's own people went and bowed down
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  Speaker 1: to a foreign god. The man who sat on the
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  Speaker 1: throne of Israel gave his worship to bal So who
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  Speaker 1: or what was this? Bal Baal was the chief god
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  Speaker 1: of the nations that surrounded Israel. A false god, his
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  Speaker 1: worshipers believed ruled over the skies, the storms, and the
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  Speaker 1: growing fields. People cried out to him for rain. They
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  Speaker 1: begged him for full harvests and healthy herds. They brought
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  Speaker 1: him sacrifices, hoping he would bless their crops and make
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  Speaker 1: their land rich. But Baal was nothing, a god of
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  Speaker 1: wood and stone and empty stories, a lifeless thing dressed
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  Speaker 1: up as a lord, set up against the living God
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  Speaker 1: who had made the heavens and the earth with a word.
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  Speaker 1: And Jezebel did not worship bail alone. She also served
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  Speaker 1: a goddess called Asherah. Her worship came with its own
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  Speaker 1: carved images, and its own sacred poles planted under the
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  Speaker 1: trees and on the high places, each one a fresh
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  Speaker 1: insult to the God of Israel. This is the true
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  Speaker 1: turning point of the whole story. It is one thing
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  Speaker 1: for foreign gods to be worshiped far away across the
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  Speaker 1: sea in another land. It is something else entirely for
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  Speaker 1: the King and Queen of Israel, God's chosen nation to
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  Speaker 1: bow before them. What had once been the religion of
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  Speaker 1: distant strangers had now become the religion of the palace itself.
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  Speaker 1: The most powerful man in the kingdom and the most
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  Speaker 1: powerful woman in the kingdom had handed their hearts to bail.
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  Speaker 1: And here is the danger. When ordinary people sin, the
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  Speaker 1: harm often stays small, hidden in one home or one heart.
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  Speaker 1: But when a king and a queen worship something, the
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  Speaker 1: whole nation feels the pull. People follow their rulers. They
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  Speaker 1: copy the throne. They learn what is allowed by watching
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  Speaker 1: what the powerful do. If the palace bows to bail,
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  Speaker 1: the message reaches every village. This is acceptable, now, this
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  Speaker 1: is even wise. This is the way of the king.
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  Speaker 1: The idols of Sidon were no longer safely across the water.
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  Speaker 1: They were home, now in Israel, with the full power
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  Speaker 1: of the crown standing behind them, and a whole nation
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  Speaker 1: watching to see what would come next. Jezebel and Ahab
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  Speaker 1: did not keep their worship hidden behind pallace walls, whispered
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  Speaker 1: in private rooms. They built it into the city, out
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  Speaker 1: in the open, for everyone to see. They gave their
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  Speaker 1: false gods a home of stone right in the middle
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  Speaker 1: of God's land. The Bible records it without flinching. In
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  Speaker 1: First Kings, chapter sixteen and verse thirty two, we read
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  Speaker 1: that Ahab reared up an altar for Baal in the
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  Speaker 1: house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. Samaria
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  Speaker 1: was the capital city, the proud seat of the kingdom,
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  Speaker 1: the place where the throne sat and the nation's business
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  Speaker 1: was done. And there in that very city a temple
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  Speaker 1: for Bial now stood, a house built for a false God,
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  Speaker 1: with an altar inside it, ready to receive sacrifices. Think
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  Speaker 1: about what that meant. This was not a tiny shrine
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  Speaker 1: tucked away in some forgotten corner. This was a public building,
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  Speaker 1: raised up in the most important city in the land,
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  Speaker 1: standing tall for all the people to see. It was
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  Speaker 1: a loud announcement carved in stone by all is welcome here,
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  Speaker 1: Come and worship, Bring your offerings. This God has a
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  Speaker 1: home among us now. And it did not stop with Bayal.
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  Speaker 1: The next verse, verse thirty three, tells us and Ahab
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  Speaker 1: made a grove. That word grove means a sacred pole
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  Speaker 1: or image set up to honor the goddess. A sherer
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  Speaker 1: yet another piece of false worship planted openly in the land,
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  Speaker 1: another rival raised against the Lord. Then that same verse
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  Speaker 1: delivers a heavy and terrible verdict. It says Ahab did
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  Speaker 1: more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger
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  Speaker 1: than all the kings of Israel that were before him.
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  Speaker 1: Every brick of that temper, every step toward that altar,
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  Speaker 1: every pole set up in the open air, was a
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  Speaker 1: direct insult to the God who had given Israel the
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  Speaker 1: land in the first place. It was rebellion built where
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  Speaker 1: everyone could see it. Idolatry in Israel was no longer
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  Speaker 1: a secret thing, no longer something people did quietly and
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  Speaker 1: felt ashamed of. It had an address. Now it had
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  Speaker 1: a building. It had a place of honor in the
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  Speaker 1: heart of the capital, paid for by the throne and
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  Speaker 1: protected by the Crown. Where once a person might have
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  Speaker 1: hidden an idol away in fear of God's law, now
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  Speaker 1: they could walk straight into a temple in the open daylight,
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  Speaker 1: climb the steps, and lay their offering on Bale's altar
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  Speaker 1: without a hint of shame. The worship of false gods
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  Speaker 1: had become the official business of the kingdom, funded, defended,
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  Speaker 1: and displayed for the whole nation to see and to follow.
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  Speaker 1: Stop here for just a moment. A story like this
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  Speaker 1: was never meant to be heard once and forgotten. Those
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  Speaker 1: us alters rising in the heart of the capital are
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  Speaker 1: not only old history. They are a mirror held up
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  Speaker 1: to every heart that has ever let one thing quietly
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  Speaker 1: take the place of God. God doesn't open the Word
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  Speaker 1: to you by accident. If this story confirmed something stirring
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  Speaker 1: in your heart, Echoes daily was made for this exact
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  Speaker 1: season of your walk. Every day you uncover a new story,
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  Speaker 1: a forgotten detail, a piece of history that brings Scripture
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  Speaker 1: to life, paired with a practice that turns what you
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  Speaker 1: learn into how you live in depth studies, biblical companions,
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  Speaker 1: and weekly journeys through lives like David, Esther and Daniel.
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  Speaker 1: The link is in the first pinned comment, but it
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  Speaker 1: won't stay there forever. Now come back with me to Samaria,
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  Speaker 1: because the temple was only the beginning of what this
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  Speaker 1: queen had planned. Jezebel did not only build temples of
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  Speaker 1: stone build an army of men to fill them. She
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  Speaker 1: gathered the servants of her gods around her and fed
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  Speaker 1: them from her own hand, turning false worship into something
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  Speaker 1: she personally paid for, protected and controlled. The Bible gives
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  Speaker 1: us the staggering numbers. It speaks of the prophets of
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  Speaker 1: Bale four hundred and fifty and the prophets of the
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  Speaker 1: Groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table. You will
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  Speaker 1: find those words in First Kings, chapter eighteen and verse nineteen.
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  Speaker 1: Sit with those numbers for a moment. Four hundred and
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  Speaker 1: fifty prophets of Baal, four hundred more prophets for the
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  Speaker 1: Goddess a Sherer. Add them together, and you have eight
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  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty men, eight hundred and fifty voices speaking
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  Speaker 1: for false gods, spreading their worship through the towns and villages,
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  Speaker 1: leading the people away from the Lord, and every single
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  Speaker 1: one of them eight at the queen's table. That last
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  Speaker 1: detail tells you everything you needed to know in those days.
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  Speaker 1: To eat at someone's table was to live under their
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  Speaker 1: care and to answer to their will. It meant you
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  Speaker 1: belonged to them. These prophets were not strangers Jezebel simply
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  Speaker 1: put up with. They were her men. She fed them,
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  Speaker 1: she housed them, She paid for them out of her
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  Speaker 1: own hand. They owed their bread, their position, and their
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  Speaker 1: power to her, and they knew it. So this was
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  Speaker 1: no scattered, accidental drift into idle worship. This was organized.
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  Speaker 1: It had structure, It had leaders, it had numbers, and
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  Speaker 1: it had money behind it. Jezebel had taken the false
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  Speaker 1: religion of her homeland and given it everything it needed
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  Speaker 1: to grow strong and deep inside Israel. A small army
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  Speaker 1: of priests, hundreds of them, all loyal to her, all
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  Speaker 1: funded by her, all ready to do whatever she asked.
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  Speaker 1: This was not a queen who merely allowed Bahle into
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  Speaker 1: the land and then stepped quietly aside. She had made
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  Speaker 1: herself the head of his religion. She was the hand
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  Speaker 1: that fed his profits, the purse that paid them, the
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  Speaker 1: power that bound them. Altogether, eight hundred and fifty men
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  Speaker 1: looked to her, and she looked to no one. They
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  Speaker 1: were her voice in every corner of the land, her
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  Speaker 1: reach into every town. She could not visit herself through them.
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  Speaker 1: Jezebel did not simply worship a false god. She organized
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  Speaker 1: a whole movement to spread him, and she sat at
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  Speaker 1: the very center of it, holding every thread in her hand.
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  Speaker 1: By now a question rises on its own. Ahab was
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  Speaker 1: the king. He wore the crown. He sat on the throne.
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  Speaker 1: He held the title, and the army and the name.
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  Speaker 1: So why does this story keep circling back again and
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  Speaker 1: again to his wife. The answer is simple, and the
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  Speaker 1: Bible does not hide it. The real driving force inside
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  Speaker 1: that palace was not the king. It was the queen.
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  Speaker 1: Scripture says this in the clearest possible words. Looking back
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  Speaker 1: over the whole of Ahab's life, the record gives a
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  Speaker 1: final verdict in First Kings, chapter twenty one and verse
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  Speaker 1: twenty five. But there was none like unto Ahab, which
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  Speaker 1: did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of
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  Speaker 1: the Lord, whom Jezebel, his wife, stirred up. Read that
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  Speaker 1: last part again slowly. Ahab sold himself to do evil
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  Speaker 1: whom Jezebel, his wife, stirred up. She was the one
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  Speaker 1: who pushed him. She was the one who fanned the flame.
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  Speaker 1: Where Ahab might have hesitated, She pressed him forward where
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  Speaker 1: he might have wavered or grown soft. She stood firm
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  Speaker 1: and would not let him turn back. The Bible does
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  Speaker 1: not say Ahab dragged Jezebel into sin. It says Jezebel
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  Speaker 1: stirred up Ahab. This is exactly why she matters so much,
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  Speaker 1: and why her name is remembered with such dread. A
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  Speaker 1: weak and wicked king is dangerous enough on his own,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: But a weak and wicked king with a strong, fearless,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: determined wife at his side, whispering, urging, pushing him ever
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: deeper into evil, that is a far greater danger. The
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: crown sat on his head, but the will came from her.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Ahab had the title. Jezebel had the resolve. He held
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: the crown, but she held the steel. He could be moved, persuaded, shaken,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: She could not. The Bible is careful to make sure
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: we never lose sight of this one fact. Behind the
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: worst king Israel had ever known, stood the woman who
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: drove him on, who steadied his hand toward evil, who
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: would not let him stop. So when you picture the
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: throne of Israel in those days, do not picture one
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: ruler sitting alone. Picture two, One who wore the crown
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: for all to see, and one who truly held the
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: power behind it. A queen who bent a king to
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: her purposes and aimed an entire kingdom in the direction
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: she had chosen. Jezebel was not satisfied with building her
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: own religion filling the land with her prophets and bending
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the King to her will. She wanted more. She wanted
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: the worship of the true God wiped out, completely, erased, silenced, gone,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: And so she turned from building temples to something far darker.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: She set out to hunt down and kill the prophets
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: of the Lord. The Bible states it plainly, without softening
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: a single word. In First Kings, chapter eighteen and verse four,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: it speaks of the time when Jezebel cut off the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: prophets of the Lord. Hear what those few quiet words
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: really describe. This was a slaughter the men who spoke
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: for God, who carried his word to the people, who
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: stood up and called the nation back to the truth.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Jezebel set out to silence them for good, one by one,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: until none were left. And this was no rumor, no
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: exaggeration grown large in the retelling. Later in that same chapter,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the killing is named a second time. In verse thirteen,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: someone speaks of when Jezebel slew the prophets of the
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Lord twice. The record makes certain we understand exactly what
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: she did. She did not merely argue with the prophets.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: She did not simply ignore them or send them away.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: She killed them. Think about how far she had come,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: step by step, since she first crossed the border. She
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: had entered Israel as a foreign bride. She had brought
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: in her gods. She had watched their temple rise in
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: the capital city. She had filled the land with hundreds
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: of false prophets, fed at her own table. And now
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: she reached for the final, darkest step, to destroy every
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: last voice that still belonged to the God of Israel.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Under her hand, the whole land changed. It became dangerous
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: to speak for the Lord. To be his prophet was
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: to be a hunted man, marked for death, simply for
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: carrying God's word. The faithful had to run to hide,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: to keep their heads low and their voices quiet, never
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: knowing when the Queen's men might come knocking at the door.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Families lost their teachers, towns lost the voices that had
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: once called them to repent. Meanwhile, her own prophets feasted
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: in the open, safe and proud and well fed, with
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: the power of the throne shielding every one of them.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: This was the height of her power. She had a
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: husband on the throne, a god in the temple, an
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: army of prophets, at her table, and the true voice
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: of God being hunted into silence across the land. Step
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: by step she had reached for everything, and step by
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: step she had taken it. And so across the whole
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: land of Israel, the worship of the One True God
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: was being driven into the shadows, pushed into caves and
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: corners and silence. While the woman from the Sea believed
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: her victory was almost complete. While the queen was busy
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: hunting down God's prophets, something quiet and brave was happening
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: right under her nose. Not everyone in the kingdom had
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: bowed to her. One man, in the most surprising place
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: of all, was risking his own life to keep the
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: faith alive. His name was Obadiah, and he held a
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: high position. He was the man in charge of the
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: king's own palace. He worked for Ahab, walked the halls
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: of power, and lived close to the throne. Yet his
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: heart did not belong to bail. The Bible tells us
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: in the First Book of Kings, chapter eighteen and verse
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: three that Obadiah feared the Lord greatly. Inside the very
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: house of a wicked king, there beat the heart of
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: a man who still loved God. And he did more
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: than believe quietly he acted. The same chapter in verse
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: four tells us what he did during the killing. Obadiah
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: took an hundred prophets and hid them by fifty in
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: a cave and fed them with bread and water. Stop
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: and picture that one hundred prophets of the Lord hunted
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: men with a price on their heads. Obadiah gathered them up,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: split them into two groups of fifty, and hid them
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: away in caves. Then day after day he carried bread
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: and water to keep them alive. Remember this was during
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: a terrible time of hunger in the land, when food
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: and water were hard to find. For anyone to feed
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a hundred extra mouths in secret took planning, courage, and
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: a steady nerve. Every trip to those caves was a risk.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: If the queen had found out, it would have cost
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: him everything, his job, his place, his very life. Think
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: of the kind of man this was. He served a
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: wicked king by day and saved God's profits by night.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: He lived close enough to Jezebel to feel the danger
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: in every breath. Yet he chose to do right anyway,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: quietly in secret, where no one would ever praise him
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: for it. He did not preach in the streets or
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: call down fire from heaven. He simply kept a hundred
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: faithful men alive, one loaf and one jar of water
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: at a time, trusting that God saw what no one
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: else could, and that is worth holding on to because
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: it shows us something true about how God works. While
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: the Queen filled the land with noise and fear and
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: false prophets, the Lord was quietly keeping his people safe
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: through one brave, ordinary man, doing one faithful thing after another.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Power is loud, faithfulness is often silent. So even at
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the height of her power, when it seemed the worship
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: of the True God was being wiped out, the Lord
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: had not been left without his own. The voices Jezebel
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: thought she had silenced were still breathing in the dark,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: fed by a faithful man who refused to bow. Her
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: victory was not complete, as she believed. Into this dark
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: and dangerous time, God sent a man the queen could
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: not control and the King could not silence. His name
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: was Elijah, and he stepped out of nowhere with a
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: word that would shake the whole kingdom. He went straight
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: to the King and spoke without fear. In First Kings,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Chapter seventeen and verse one, Elijah declared, as the Lord
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: God of Israel, liveth before whom I stand, There shall
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: not be dune nor reign these years, But according to
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: my word. Think about how bold that was. One man
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: with no army and no crown, walked into the presence
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: of the most powerful and dangerous king in the land,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: a king whose wife was killing prophets like him, and
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: announced that the reign itself would stop, and not just
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: for a season, but for years. No rain, no dew,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: nothing would fall from the sky until Elijah said so. Then,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: having spoken, he turned and went in to hiding, leaving
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: his words to do their work. And here was the
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: deepest blow of all. The very thing the people had
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: been begging Bile to give them rain for their fields,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: water for their crops simply stopped. The sky shut tight,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: The streams dried up, the ground cracked open, the grass withered,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the animals grew thin, and the land slowly starved. And
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the false God who was supposed to rule the skies
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: could do nothing about it. He could not bring back
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: a single drop day after dry day. The drought was
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: a silent, stinging proof that Bale was powerless, and the
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Lord alone held the heavens in his hand. The years passed,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: and the famine grew terrible. The whole land felt the
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: weight of those empty skies, and then God moved again.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: In First Kings chapter eighteen and verse one, the word
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: go show thyself unto Ahab, and I will send rain
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: upon the earth. The waiting was over. The God who
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: had shut the sky was about to open it again,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: but not before settling once and for all the question
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: of who was truly God in Israel. Elijah turned his
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: face toward the King and toward the show down that
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: was coming. Elijah did not return quietly. He came back
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: with a challenge so bold it would force the whole
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: nation to choose out in the open between the Lord
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: and Bal. He called for every one to gather on
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: a mountain called Carmel, the people, the King, and the
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: prophets of Baal. When the crowds had come together, Elijah
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: stood before them and asked a question that cut straight
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: to the heart. In First Kings chapter eighteen and verse
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: twenty one, he said, how long halt ye between two opinions?
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: If the Lord be God follow him, But if Bal,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: then follow him. In simple words, he was asking, how
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: long will you keep limping back and forth between two sides?
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: How long will you try to keep one foot with
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: God and one foot with bal pick one stop sitting
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: on the fence. The people had been trying to have
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: it both ways, a little of the Lord, a little
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: of bal, never fully choosing. And Elijah told them plainly
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: that they could not. And what was their answer? Silence?
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: The Bible says the people answered him not a word.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: They knew deep down that they had been caught between
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: two masters, and they had no reply. Then he laid
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: out a test that any one could understand. There would
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: be two altars. The prophets of Bale would prepare their
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: sacrifice and call on their god. Elijah would prepare his
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: and call on the Lord. But no man would light
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: the fire. Heaven itself would have to answer. He spelled
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: it out in verse twenty four. Call on the name
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: of your gods, and I will call on the name
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: of the Lord. And the God that answereth by fire,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Let him be God. Whichever God sent down fire from
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: the sky to burn up the offering that one was
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: the real God. It was fair. It was simple, it
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: was impossible to fake, and the people agreed it was
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: a good plan. The trap was set not by trickery,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: but by truth. There were hundreds of prophets on Baal's side,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: and only one prophet of the Lord standing against them.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: The crowd had gathered, the altars would soon be built,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: and the whole nation held its breath. Now all of
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Israel would watch with their own eyes to see who
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: would answer, the many or the one. The prophets of
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Bail went first. They built their altar, laid out their sacrifice,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: and began to call on their god. They cried out,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: they shouted, They danced around the altar from morning until noon,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: begging Baal to send down fire, and nothing happened. The
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Bible records the silence in First Kings, chapter eighteen and
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: verse twenty six. They called on the name of Bail
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: from morning even until noon, saying, oh, Bail, hear us,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: But there was no voice nor any that answered. And
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: they screamed until their voices broke, and the sky stayed empty.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: No fire, no answer, nothing at all. Hour after hour,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: they kept on, growing more frantic, leaping around the altar,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: working themselves into a frenzy, and still the heavens gave
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: them only silence. Then it was Elijah's turn. He rebuilt
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: the altar of the Lord, laid the wood and the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: sacrifice on it, and then did something that made the
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: test even harder. He had water poured over everything once, twice,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: three times, until the offering was soaked and the trench
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: around the altar was full. There would be no chance
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: of a hidden flame or a clever trick. Everything was
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: dripping wet. If fire came now, no one could say
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: it was anything but the hand of God. Then Elijah
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: simply prayed, no shouting, no dancing, no cutting himself, just
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: a few honest words, asking God to show the people
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: the truth and turn their hearts back. And Heaven answered
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: at once. In verse thirty eight, the Bible says, then
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: sacrifice and the wood, and the stones and the dust,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: and licked up the water that was in the trench.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: The fire did not just burn the sacrifice. It burned
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the wood, It burned the very stones of the altar,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: It burned the dust on the ground, and it dried
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: up every bit of the water in the trench. There
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: was nothing left, no scrap, no puddle, nothing. This was
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: no small flame and no lucky spark. It was a
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: blaze sent straight from God, swallowing up everything in its path,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: leaving no room for doubt and no excuse for unbelief.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: The whole crowd had watched it fall from the sky
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: with their own eyes, and they dropped to the ground
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: in fear and wonder. In verse thirty nine, they cried
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: out together, the Lord he is the God, The Lord
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: he is the God. They said it twice, as if
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: once was not enough. In a single blazing moment, the
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: question that had divided the nation for so long was
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: answered for every one to see. The contest was over,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: and the false prophets had been exposed before the entire nation.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: But Elijah was not finished. The men who had led
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Israel astray would not simply walk away free. In First Kings,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: chapter eighteen and verse forty, Elijah gave the command take
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the prophets of bail, let not one of them escape,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: And they took them and slew them. There lie the
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: prophets who had eaten so well, who had spread their
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: lies across the land, who had served the queen and
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: her gods. That day they were seized and put to death.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: The false religion Jezebel had built suffered a crushing public defeat.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: When it was all over, the king rode home to
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: his queen with the news. In First Kings, chapter nineteen
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: and verse one, Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: and with all how he had slain all the prophets
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: with the sword. Every word of it reached her ears.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: The fire that fell from heaven, the people crying out
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: that the Lord alone was God, and the death of
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: the prophets she had fed at her own side. Now
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Here is the moment that tells you exactly who Jezebel was.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Fire had fallen from the sky, her gods had been
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: shown to be worthless before all of Israel. The whole
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: nation had turned in a single afternoon back toward the Lord.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: A weaker heart would have trembled, A wiser heart would
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: have wondered if perhaps the God of Israel really was
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: God after all. A humble heart would have repented on
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: the spot. Jezebel did none of those things. Her pride
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: did not crack, her rage did not cool, it burned hotter.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: She sent a message straight to Elijah, and it was
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: a death sentence. In verse two, she swore, so let
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the gods do to me, and more also, if I
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: make not thy life as the life of one of them,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: by to morrow, about this time, in plain words, by
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: this time tomorrow, you will be as dead as the
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: prophets you killed. Or may my own gods destroy me.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: She had lost the contest on the mountain, but she
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: had not lost her will to kill. If anything, it
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: had grown stronger. This is the heart of her corruption.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: The clearest sign from heaven, the kind most people would
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: give anything to witness, had just been placed right in
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: front of her, and it changed nothing in her. She
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: did not bow, She did not pause, She did not
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: even slow down. She simply picked up where she left off,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: already plotting the next death. A softer woman would have
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: been broken by what happened on that mountain. Jezebel only
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: sharpened her knife. You might think a man who had
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: just called down fire from heaven would have no reason
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: to fear any one. He had stood alone against hundreds
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: and one. He had seen God answer in power before
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: the eyes of the whole nation. And yet when Jezebel's
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: threat reached him. Something in Elijah broke. The Bible does
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: not hide it. In First Kings, chapter nineteen and verse three,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: it says, and when he saw that, he arose and
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: went for his life. The mighty Prophet ran. The same
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: man who had faced down a king and an army
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: of false prophets, who had stood unshaken while the whole
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: nation watched, now fled for his life because of the
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: words of one furious woman. He did not stay to fight,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: He did not call down more fire. He ran. That
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: is how much fear her name carried in that land.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: A single threat from Jezebel was enough to send the
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: bravest man in Israel running into the desert. He ran far,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: deep into the wilderness until he could go no further,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: And there alone, and worn out under the open sky,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: the great Prophet sank into despair. In verse four, he
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: requested for himself that he might die, and said, it
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: is enough now, O Lord, take away my life. He
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: was so tired, so afraid, so completely emptied out, that
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: he asked God to simply let him die. The man
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: who had won the greatest victory now wanted his life
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: to be over. Sit with that for a moment. This
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: was Elijah, the man of fire, the man of faith,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: the prophet who had just seen God answer from heaven,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: and the threat of Jezebel had pushed him to the
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: very edge of giving up. It tells you something almost
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: terrifying about the power this one woman held over the land.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: She could not stop the fire of God, she could
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: not undo what happened on the mountain, but she could
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: fill the strongest servant of God with fear and send
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: him fleeing into the night, begging to die. God did
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: not leave him there. The Lord met Elijah in his weakness,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: did not scold him, but gently gave him food and rest,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: and lifted him back to his feet to keep going.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: There is something deeply human in all of this. Even
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: the greatest servants of God grow tired and afraid, Even
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: the boldest hearts can be shaken. But the lesson hung
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: heavy in the air. Jezebel was still on her throne,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: still full of hate, and still as dangerous as ever.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: The fire on the mountain had not removed her. The
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: real battle was far from over. Time moved on, and
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: the story turns now to a smaller scene, a quiet
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: quarrel over a piece of land, but out of this
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: small thing would come one of the darkest crimes in
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the whole story. There was a man named Naboth who
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: owned a vineyard. It happened to sit close to the palace,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: and King Ahab wanted it for himself to tear out
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: the vines and make a garden of vegetables. It was
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: a small wish, really, the kind of thing a king
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: might forget about by the next morning. So a Hab
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: made what seemed like a fair offer in First Kings,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty one and verse two. Ahab said, give me
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: thy vineyard, that I may have it for a garden
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: of herbs, and I will give THEE for it a
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: better vineyard than it, or I will give thee the
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: worth of it in money, a better vineyard somewhere else,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: or a fair price in silver by any normal measure.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: It sounded reasonable, but Naboth said no, and his reason
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: was not stubbornness. It was faith that land was not
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: just property to be traded away. It was his family inheritance,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: the ground his fathers had worked, passed down through the generations,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: and protected by God's own law for his people. The
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: law said such inheritance was to stay within the family
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: kept as a sacred trust. In verse three, Naboth answered,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: the Lord forbid it me that I should give the
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: inheritance of my father's unto thee. To sell it away,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: even to a king, even for a fortune, would be
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: to throw aside something God had given his family to keep.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: So he refused the king to his face, not out
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: of pride, but out of obedience to God. And how
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: did the most powerful man in the kingdom react to
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: one honest No, not with understanding, not even with open anger,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: with a sulk. In verse four, Ahab came into his house,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: heavy and displeased, and he laid him down upon his
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: bed and turned away his face, and would eat no bread.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: The King of Israel went home, lay down on his bed,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: turned to face the wall, and refused to eat, pouting
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: like a child who had been told he could not
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: have a toy. Think of how small all that is.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: A grown king, a ruler of nations, lying in bed
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: and refusing his food because one man would not break
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: God's law to please him. One simple man had stood
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: on what was right, and the king, instead of accepting it,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: lay sulking in his room. The vineyard was still Naboths
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: just as it should have been. But the king's bad
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: mood was about to reach the ears of the one
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: person in the palace who would not let the matter rest.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: When Jezebel found her husband lying on his bed, refusing
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: to eat over a vineyard he could not have, she
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: did not comfort him. She scorned him to her, a
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: king who could not simply take what he wanted was
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: no king at all. In First Kings, Chapter twenty one
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: and verse seven, she said to him, dost thou now
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: govern the kingdom of Israel? Arise and eat bread, and
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: let thine heart be merry. I will give thee the
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: vineyard of Naboth. In other words, are you not the king?
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Get up, eat, cheer up. Leave it to me. I
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: will get you that vineyard. Where Ahab saw a wall
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: he could not cross, Jezebel saw only a problem to
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: be removed, and her plan was as cold as it
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: was clever. She wrote letters in the king's own name
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: and sealed them with his royal seal, so that they
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: carried the full power of the throne behind them. No
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: one reading them would dare to question them. Then she
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: ordered the leaders of Naboth's own city to set up
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: a trap. They were to call a special public gathering,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: placed Naboth up front where everyone could see him, and
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: pay two worthless men to stand up and lie to
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: accuse him falsely of cursing God and the King. Under
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: the law that charge carried the death penalty. She was
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: using God's own law as a weapon to murder a
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: godly man. Look at how much evil is packed into
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: this plan. She took the king's authority and used it
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: to kill. She turned the leaders of a town to murderers.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: She found liars and paid them to swear away an
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: innocent life, and she dressed the whole thing up to
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: look like proper justice, so that a cold blooded murder
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: would wear the mask of a fair trial. The leaders obeyed,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: the lie was told, and an innocent man was condemned.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: In verse thirteen, the Bible says, they carried him forth
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: out of the city and stoned him with stones that
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: he died. Naboth, who had done nothing but honor God
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: and protect what was his, was dragged outside his own
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: town and killed on the word of paid liars. The
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: moment the deed was done, Jezebel went to her husband
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: and told him to get up and take the vineyard,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: for Naboth was dead. There was no guilt in her voice,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: no fear, only the satisfaction of a problem solved, and
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Ahab did exactly as she said in verse sixteen. When
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab rose up to
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: go down to the the vineyard of Naboth to take
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: possession of it. He climbed out of his bed, the
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: same bed where he had sulked, and he walked down
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: to claim the land of the murdered man as his own,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: as if nothing wrong had happened at all. The king
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: thought the matter was closed. The man who stood in
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: his way was dead and buried. The land was finally his,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: and there was no one left to argue or to
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: stop him. As far as Ahab could see, he had won.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: The trial had worked, the lie had held. The vineyard
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: was his. But Heaven had been watching every single step,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: the false charges, the paid liars, the stoning, the smiling
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: walk down to claim the prize, and God was not finished.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: Even as the king enjoyed his new ground, a visitor
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: was already on the way, sent by God to meet
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: him on the very soil he had stolen. The Bible
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: tells us in the First Book of Kings, chapter twenty
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: one and verse eighteen, that the Lord spoke to his prophet, arise,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: go down to meet Ahab, King of Israel. Behold, he
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: is in the vineyard of Naboth, whither he is gone
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: down to possess it. Of all the places in the
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: whole kingdom, God sent his prophet to that one spot,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: the place soaked in innocent blood, the place where the
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: king had no right to set his foot. So Elijah
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: went down. Picture the scene. The king is strolling through
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: his prize, pleased with himself, breathing in the good fortune
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: of a man who has finally gotten his way. The
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: vines are his now, the trouble is behind him, and there,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: suddenly standing in his path is the prophet of God,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: the one man in the whole kingdom who would not
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: flatter him, the one voice he could not silence. Their
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: eyes meet, and in that moment the king knows this
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: is no friendly visit. The words Elijah carried were sharp
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: and plain. In verse nineteen, he was told to say,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: hast thou killed and also taken possession? Just a few words,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: but they cut through every excuse like a blade. Have
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: you murdered a man, and now you walk about enjoying
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: his land as if nothing happened. There was no hiding
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: behind the false trial that had been arranged, There was
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: no pretending the charges had been real. God had seen
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: pass the lies and the paid witnesses and the royal seal.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: He had watched the whole ugly thing from beginning to end,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: and now he was saying it out loud, right there
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: in the open air, where the King could not escape it.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: The crime that had been done in secret, dressed up
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: to look like proper justice, was now dragged into the
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: daylight for what it truly was, plain murder and theft
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: on top of it, and the punishment for it was
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: about to be spoken. Elijah did not stop at the question.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: He had not come merely to scold. He had come
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: to deliver a verdict from the throne of heaven, and
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: it was a terrible one. The blood that had been
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: spilled would be answered drop for drop, and no crown
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: could buy a way out of it. First came the
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: word against the king himself in First Kings, Chapter twenty
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: one and verse nineteen. The prophet continued in the place
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: thy blood even thine listen to How fitting that sentence was.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: The very fate that had fallen on the innocent man
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: would come circling back upon the guilty king. The dogs
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: that had licked up Naboth's blood would one day lick
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: up Ahabs. What he had done would be measured back
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: to him in the same coin. Then the judgment widened.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: It was not only Ahab who would pay, but his
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: whole family line. In verse twenty one, God declared, behold,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: I will bring evil upon thee and will take away
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: thy posterity, his children, his grandchildren, his house, everything he
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: had hoped to pass on and protect. All of it
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: was now marked for ruin. The proud, powerful family that
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Ahab's father had built, the family Jezebel had married into
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: and corrupted, would one day be torn down to nothing.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: And then came the word that hangs over this entire story,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: the word about the queen herself. In verse twenty three,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: Elijah spoke the doom of Jezebel by name. The dogs
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. Sit with
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: How shocking that was. This was a queen, a king's daughter,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: a woman of the highest rank in the land. Queens
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: were buried with honor, laid in royal tombs, remembered with monuments.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: But God said her end would be the opposite of
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: all that, no tomb, no honor. Her body would be
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: food for dogs, torn apart by scavengers right beside the
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: city wall. The judgment was sealed in verse twenty four,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: which promised that every one of Ahab's line who died
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: would be eaten by dogs or by birds, left without burial,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: without honor, without rest, From the king, to his sons,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: to the queen herself, the sentence was set in stone.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: The only thing left undecided was when it would all
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: come to pass. And as you will see, every single
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: word would come true exactly in order and to the letter.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: The prophet's words did not fall the very next day.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Some time passed, and the king went on with his
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: rule and his wars. But a word from God does
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: not fade just because the days roll by. It waits,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: and its hour was coming. That hour found Ahab on
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: a battle field. Israel had gone to war, and the
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: king rode out among his soldiers. He was a careful man,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: and he knew the danger, so he tried something clever.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: He went into the battle in disguise, dressing down so
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: the enemy would not know which man was the king
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: and would not single him out. He thought that if
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: no one could see the crown, no arrow would find him.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: But you cannot dress your way out of a word
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: that God has spoken. In First Kings, chapter twenty two
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: and verse thirty four, the Bible tells us exactly how
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: it happened. And a certain man drew a bow at
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: a venture and smote the King of Israel between the
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: joints of the harness. Read that slowly, because every word matters.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: A soldier, just some unnamed man drew his bow at
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: a venture, which simply means he was not aiming at
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: any one in particular. He pulled the string back and
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: let the arrow fly into the crowd of battle, and
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: out of that entire field of soldiers, that one random
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: arrow found the one small gap between the pieces of
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: the King's armor. The disguise did not matter, the odds
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: did not matter. It was not luck or chance. It
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: was the hand of God guiding that arrow straight to
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: its mark. Ahab was struck and the wound was deadly.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: He was propped up in his chariot so the soldiers
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: would not lose heart and flee. And there he stood,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: slowly bleeding, watching the battle rage on around him. But
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: his strength drained away with his blood, and by the
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: time the sun went down, the king was dead. All
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: his cleverness, all his disguises, all his power could not
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: buy him one more hour. Once God's word had found
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: its mark, Now watch the word of God come true
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: with your own eyes. They brought the bloody chariot back
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: to the city and washed it out by a pool
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: in verse thirty eight the Bible records, and one washed
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: the chariot in the pool of Samaria, and the dogs
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: licked up his blood according unto the word of the
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Lord which he spake, just as Elijah had said in
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: the Stolen vineyard, the dogs came and licked the blood
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: of Ahab off the ground. The first thread of the
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: great Judgment had been pulled tight, and it held fast.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: The king was dead, but the queen was not. And
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: here the story takes a turn that might surprise you.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: You might expect Jezebel to fall right away, but she
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: did not. Ahab was gone, yet she lived on, and
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: she lived on with power. After Ahab, his sons took
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: the throne one after another, and their mother stood behind them.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: The first to rule was their son Ahaziah, and the
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Bible makes very plain whose footsteps he followed. In First Kings,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: chapter twenty two and verse fifty two, it says he
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: did evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: in the way of his father, and in the way
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: of his mother. There it is in black and white,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: in the way of his mother. Jezebel's hand was still
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: shaping the kingdom through her own son. When that son's
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: short reign ended, another of her sons came to power.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: In the Second Book of Kings, chapter three and verse one,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: we read that Jehoram, the son of Ahab, began to
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: reign over Israel in Samaria. The year kept rolling on
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: one son, then the next, and through all of it
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Jezebel remained no longer the king's wife, but now the
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: queen mother, the old matriarch of a wicked family, still
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: living in the palace, still feared by those around her,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: still pulling at the threads of the kingdom from the shadows.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: This is one of the strangest parts of her story.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: The fire of God had fallen, and she survived it.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Her husband had died, and she survived that too. Kings
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: came and kings went, and still she stood. If you
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: had lived in those days and watched her grow older
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: on her throne, you might have started to believe she
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: truly was untouchable, that whatever curse had been spoken over
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: her had quietly blown away with the years. Think about
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: how much time this covers. The fire on the mountain
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: was long passed, the stolen vineyard was long passed. Whole
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: rains came and went, Kings rose and fell, and still
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: Jezebel remained. To anyone watching, it must have seemed as
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: if she had slipped free, as if the word spoken
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: against her had been forgotten, as if she would simply
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: grow old and die quietly in her bed, like any
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: other queen, honored and safe to the end. Year after year,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: nothing came for her. The threat must have felt like
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: an old story that would never happen. But the word
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: of the Lord had not been forgotten. God does not forget.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: The sentence was still standing, still waiting, just as sure
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: and solid as the day Elijah first spoke it. Time
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: passing does not weaken what God has said, it only
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: brings the moment closer. The clock was quietly running down
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: on the queen, and Jezebel, comfortable on her throne and
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: proud as ever, did not hear it ticking. When God's
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: judgment finally moved, it did not creep a riding hard
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: and fast in the form of one man. His name
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: was j Hu, a fierce army commander, and God chose
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: him to be the blade that would fall on the
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: whole house of Ahab. The plan began quietly far from
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: the palace. The prophet Elisha called for a young man,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: handed him a flask of oil, and sent him off
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: with a secret mission. Find the commander Jehu among the soldiers,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: take him aside, pour the oil on his head, and run.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: So the young prophet went, found j Hu sitting with
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: the other captains, drew him away into a private room,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: and poured the oil out over him. In the Second
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: Book of Kings, chapter nine and verse six, he said, thus, Saith,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: the Lord, God of Israel, I have anointed thee king
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: over the people of the Lord, even over Israel. In
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: that small, hidden moment, with no crowd and no ceremony,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: g Hu became God's chosen king and God's chosen instrument
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: of justice. But this was no ordinary crowning. It came
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: with a mission, and the mission named the very thing
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: this whole story has been building toward. In Verse seven,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: the word continued, and thou shalt smite the house of Ahab,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: thy Master, that I may avenge the blood of my servants,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: the Lord at the hand of Jezebel. Stop and feel
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: the weight of that line. At the hand of Jezebel,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: God himself pointed straight at her, all those prophets she
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: had hunted and killed long ago, back when she first
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: rose to power. All that innocent blood spilled across the land.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: God had not forgotten a single drop of it. The
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: years of waiting had not washed it away. Now, at last,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: the time had come for it all to be answered.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: Jehu did not hesitate. He was not the kind of
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: man to think twice. The moment he was anointed, the
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: soldiers around him caught fire with the news, blew their trumpets,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: and shouted that Jihu was king. He climbed into his chariot,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: gripped the reins, and turned the horses toward Jezreel, where
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: the royal family lived. He drove so wildly that men
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: who saw him coming would later say he drove like
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: a madman. The day of reckoning, delayed for so many
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: long years, had finally arrived, and it was thundering across
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: the land, straight toward the queen and her house. Jihu
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: came so fast and so hard that the watchmen on
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: the city walls could see his approach from far off.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Word was sent to the King, Jezebel's son, who was
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: now ruling and recovering in the city. Not knowing the truth,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: the king ordered his chariot made ready and rode out
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: to meet the stranger himself. The two men met. Of
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: all the places in the land, on the very field
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: that had once belonged to the murdered Naboth, of all
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: the ground in the kingdom, the king rode out to
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: the one plot stained by his family's greatest crime. The
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: king called out, asking if Jihu came in peace, and
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Jehu's answer tore the mask off everything in the Second
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Book of Kings, chapter nine and verse twenty two. He
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: shot back, what peace, so long as the hordoms of
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  Speaker 1: thy mother Jezebel, and her witchcrafts are so many. There
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  Speaker 1: it was again her name, rising up in the very
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  Speaker 1: last hour. Even now with her son grown and sitting
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  Speaker 1: on the throne, the rot in the whole kingdom traced
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  Speaker 1: straight back to one source. Jezebel, her false worship, her
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  Speaker 1: dark and forbidden practices, her hold on the land. All
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  Speaker 1: of it was still poisoning everything. Jihu would not so
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  Speaker 1: much as speak the word peace while the works of
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  Speaker 1: that woman still stood in his mind. There could be
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  Speaker 1: no peace until her evil was torn out by the root.
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  Speaker 1: The king understood in a flash that this was no
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: friendly visit. It was rebellion, It was judgment riding straight
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  Speaker 1: at him. He spun his chariot around and tried to flee,
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  Speaker 1: crying out a warning to those behind him, but it
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: was far too late to run. In verse twenty four,
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  Speaker 1: the Bible tells us Ji, who drew a bow with
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  Speaker 1: his full strength and smote Jehoram between his arms, and
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  Speaker 1: the arrow went out at his heart, one shot drawn
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: with everything, Ji, who had straight through the body and
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  Speaker 1: out the other side. Jezebel's son slumped down dead in
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  Speaker 1: his chariot, And then Jihu did something heavy with meaning.
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  Speaker 1: He ordered the body to be thrown out on to
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  Speaker 1: that very field, the same ground that had been seized
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  Speaker 1: through murder all those years before. The blood of the
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  Speaker 1: house of Ahab was now poured out on the very
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  Speaker 1: soil their crime had stolen. The wrong done in that
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  Speaker 1: place was being answered in that place. Piece by piece.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: The family was falling, and now only one was left,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: the old Queen herself. News travels fast in a city
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: under attack, and it reached the old queen quickly. She
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: heard that she who had killed her son and was
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: now coming through the gates. She knew surely that he
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: was coming for her next. And here we see the
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  Speaker 1: kind of woman Jezebel was, right to the very end.
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  Speaker 1: She did not hide, She did not weep, She did
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: not run for the back door, or fall to her
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  Speaker 1: knees and beg for mercy. Instead. In the Second Book
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: of Kings, chapter nine and verse thirty, the Bible says,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: she painted her face and tired her head and looked
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: out at a window. She took the time to paint
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  Speaker 1: her eyes, to arrange her hair, to make herself up
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  Speaker 1: like the queen she had always been. Then she went
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: to an upper window and looked out, calm and proud
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: to watch her enemy ride in. Think about that choice.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: With death pounding at the gates, she did not prepare
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: to escape. She prepared her appearance. If the end was coming,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: she would meet it on her feet, dressed in every
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: bit of her royal pride. And when Jihu came riding
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  Speaker 1: through the gate below her, she did not plead for
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  Speaker 1: her life. She mocked him. In verse thirty one, she
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  Speaker 1: called down from her window, had Zimri peace, who slew
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  Speaker 1: his master? She was hurling an insult straight into his face.
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  Speaker 1: She was comparing him to a man from Israel's past
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  Speaker 1: named Zimri, a soldier who had once murdered his king
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  Speaker 1: and grabbed the throne, only to be destroyed in a
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: matter of days. So her taunt really meant, you think
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: you've won, You traitor murderers who seize a throne, don't last.
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  Speaker 1: Your turn is coming too. Even with the man who
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: would kill her standing right below, Jezebel was sharp tongued, fearless,
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  Speaker 1: and utterly unbroken. It was the same proud spirit that
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  Speaker 1: had carried her from the very beginning, The princess who
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  Speaker 1: never learned to bow, who never once gave in to
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: any one. She had built her entire life on power,
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  Speaker 1: on control, on making others fear her, and she clung
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: to that pride with both hands, even as her final
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: moment closed in around her. She stood at that high window,
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  Speaker 1: looking down on the very man God had raised up
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  Speaker 1: to enter her, and she had no idea how completely,
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  Speaker 1: how exactly, the next few seconds would fulfill every word
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  Speaker 1: that had ever been spoken against her. Ji Hugh did
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  Speaker 1: not answer her insult with words. He answered it with
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  Speaker 1: a command. He looked up at that window and called out,
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  Speaker 1: who is on my side? Who? And up at the
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  Speaker 1: window a few of the palace servants who had served
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: Jezebel leaned out and looked down at him, waiting for
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: his order. His order was simple and final. In the
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  Speaker 1: Second Book of Kings, Chapter nine and verse thirty three,
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  Speaker 1: Jihu said, throw her down. So they threw her down,
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  Speaker 1: and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall
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  Speaker 1: and on the horses, and he trode her under foot.
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  Speaker 1: Think of the turn. In that single moment, the very
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  Speaker 1: servants who had stood beside her, who had served her
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  Speaker 1: and feared her for years, leaned out and threw their
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: queen from the window. At a stranger's command, she fell
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  Speaker 1: from that high place to the ground below, and her
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: blood splattered against the city wall and across the horses. Thenji,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: whose chariot drove forward, and the horses trampled over her.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: In the space of a breath, the proud queen, who
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  Speaker 1: had ruled and terrified a nation, lay crushed and lifeless
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: in the dirt beside the wall. Ji, who rode on
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: into the palace as if nothing had slowed him, sat
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: down and ate and drank. Only later did he give
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: a thought to her burial. After all, he said she
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  Speaker 1: was a king's daughter, and even she should be put
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  Speaker 1: in a grave. But when servants were set out to
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  Speaker 1: bury her, what they found stop them cold. In verse
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  Speaker 1: thirty five, the Bible says they went to bury her,
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  Speaker 1: but they found no more of her than the skull
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  Speaker 1: and the feet and the palms of her hands. That
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: was all that remained of the great queen. A skull,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: two feet and the palms of her hands. The dogs
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  Speaker 1: had done the rest exactly as God had said they would.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: And then Jihu remembered, and he understood exactly what he
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: was looking at. In Verses thirty six and thirty seven,
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  Speaker 1: he declared, this is the word of the Lord, which
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  Speaker 1: he spake by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, in
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  Speaker 1: the portion of Jezreel, shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel,
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  Speaker 1: and the carcass of Jezebel shall be as dung upon
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  Speaker 1: the face of the field, so that they shall not
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  Speaker 1: say this is Jezebel. There it was fulfilled before his
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: very eyes. The prophecy spoken long ago in a stolen
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: vineyard had come true, down to the smallest and most
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  Speaker 1: exact detail. By the wall of Jezreel. The dogs ate
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: the flesh of the queen who had hunted God's prophets
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  Speaker 1: and murdered the innocent for a piece of land. So
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: little of her was left that no one could even
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: point to the ground and say, this is Jezebel. The
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: woman who had once filled a whole nation with her
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: name was wiped from the earth so completely that her
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: name had almost nothing left to mark. If this story
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: stirred something in you, don't let it stop here. Take
• 1:06:38
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• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: miss the next powerful story we bring to life from
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: the pages of Scripture. And if these words touched your heart.
• 1:06:49
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• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: to day, a friend, a family member, any one who
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: could be reminded that God sees, God remembers, and God's
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: word always comes to pass. Thank you for walking through
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: this story. We'll see you in the next one.