(Note: The following excerpt—relevant then and urgently applicable now—is from a fiery sermon Dr. Peter Marshall preached on March 11, 1944, at the St. Charles Presbyterian Church in New Orleans, Louisiana. Originally transcribed and reproduced by Lamb & Lion Ministries with the permission of Dr. Marshall’s son, Reverend Peter J. Marshall. For the full audio of Dr. Peter Marshall’s sermon, please visit sermonaudio.com.)
“If the Lord be God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him.” (1 Kings 18:21)
The setting of the text is one of the most dramatic in the Old Testament. The leaders of the nation, including the king, had come together to make a great decision. It was a national emergency, something had to be done. Elijah the prophet had called them to meet on Mount Carmel to settle no less a question than whom they should worship. It was a day of choice, a day of destiny.
William Penn said that “Men must be governed by God, or they will be ruled by tyrants.” Here then was an ancient Hebrew prophet facing the very same issue, and making his people face it with him.
A Blessed Heritage
They all knew the history of their nation, how their fathers had come out of the wilderness, out of bondage into a new land of pioneers. Behind them were great leaders—Moses and Aaron and Joshua—men who had been led by God. They had set up not a democracy, but a theocracy, a state governed by God.
The leaders of the young nation had taken God as their king and sovereign. They had ample reason to believe, having seen it worked out in their own history, that righteousness alone exalted a nation, and that the only nation blessed was the one whose God was the Lord. They had seen it work in the past; their national history was proof. They had been taught that obedience to the laws of God was the only foundation for national greatness, liberty, and security. As long as the nation recognized God as supreme it could stand.
Moral Drift and Confusion
But something had been happening in the national life. The faith and vision of the founding fathers had faded. Moral decay had set in. There was confusion in the minds of the people. They were beginning to forget the principles that had made them a nation. They had begun to love things more than principle.
All around them paganism flourished… Materialism had a god, and his name was Baal. He offered to his devotees the things that human instincts crave. He was a god of the flesh. His priests encouraged the people to follow their natural inclinations. It was worship in indulgence, expressed in lust, and adored in selfishness. It had no inhibitions at all. It said, “Look after number one, be yourself, be natural.” Self-expression and natural instincts were its program. A good time for everyone according to the flesh was its goal. No wonder it grew in popularity.
But still, Israel was confused. The inheritances of the past and the early teachings of their parents were not forgotten. Something of conscience was not yet drugged, so they were confused and uneasy. They took a little of Jehovah, and a little of Baal. They became by degrees more and more broad-minded. Was it not a free country? Who wanted to be old-fashioned? So, morality became a relative thing. The old absolutes were regarded as far too intolerant. The national moral standards were lowered. The worship of Baal and Jehovah got mixed somehow. It was hard to draw a line of distinction. Materialism and Idealism were often confused.
A Time for Decision
Now, Elijah saw the danger. He saw what would happen to the nation when its moral fiber was weakened. He knew the end of confusion and indecision. He believed with all his heart that national ruin and disaster were inevitable if the nation forsook Jehovah and departed from its charter and constitution. So, he summoned the leaders of the country together on this day of destiny: “If the Lord be God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him.”
It was a time now for men to take sides. There was no middle ground, it could not be neutral. They had to be on one side or the other. They had to decide whether they and their nation would be governed by God or ruled by tyrants. Elijah saw that Israel as a nation could not go with God and Baal, it had to be God or Baal.
The Test of Gods
You remember the dramatic test of trial by fire? On the slopes of Carmel with the copper sky above them and the parched, sunbaked plains of Jezreel at their feet, the people stood waiting. Elijah announced his proposed test. Let the matter be decided once and for all, let sacrifices be laid on the altar. Let him be God who would send down fire and consume the offerings.
Let Baal have the advantage of priority, let his priests have the first inning. Everything would be in their favor. The sun climbing to meridian would be at its height. There were 450 of them, and if they all prayed, that would be a lot of prayers. Let them call upon their god and let him answer if he could.
First Baal…
Then began the weird pagan performance with Elijah jiving at them with pointed sarcasm. While his words had blades in them, his taunts were razor-sharp. “Cry louder! Why don’t you cry louder? He is a god you’re crying to, isn’t he? Well, he must be talking to somebody, he must be in the chase [hunting] or perhaps he’s gone for a walk. Perhaps he’s asleep. He may be taking a nap, cry louder, wake him up.”
He taunted them all day long, until they were all at the point of exhaustion. Hoarse with their shouting, wearied with their dancing, bleeding and wounded… They had cut themselves, hoping that the sight of their own blood spurting from tired arms and legs might cause Baal to relent and answer. They carried on until evening. But there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.
…Then Jehovah
Then Elijah, confident and unhurried, called the people closer. Going over to an abandoned, broken-down Jehovah altar, Elijah had them set upon it a sacrifice and drenched it three times with water. He made the test more impressive by soaking the whole altar with water that ran into a trench dug all around it. And then his prayer to Jehovah, not ranting or foaming, or shouting—and its answer in fire that consumed the sacrifice, licked up the water in the trench until the people looking on cried as they fell on their faces, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!”
The Need for Prophets
Now I suggest to you that America needs prophets today… who will set before the nation the essential choices…
A time like this demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands—men whom the lust of office does not kill, men whom the spoils of office cannot buy, men who possess opinions and a will, men who have honor, men who will not lie, men who can stand before a demigod and damn his treacherous flatteries without winking, tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog in public duty and in private thinking, while the rabble with their thumb-worn creeds, their large professions, and their little deeds mingle in selfish strife.
The Danger Within
Lo, freedom weeps. Wrong rules the land. And waiting justice sleeps. We are engaged in total war and fighting for total victory. There are evil forces plotting… outside the United States and within the nation as well. For men have become lovers of themselves more than lovers of their country.
Not all traitors are enemy agents… Love of power and authority has enslaved the hearts of many Americans. Our moral standards have been lowered. And no nation makes progress in a downward direction…
The choices you make in moral and religious questions determine the way America will go. We badly need a prophet who will have the ear of America and who will say, “If the Lord be God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him.”
The Choices Before Us
We must decide and decide quickly who is chief, whom we will serve. Millions of people in America live in moral fogs. The issues are not clear to them. They cannot face the light that makes them black or white. They want grays and neutral tints. They move in a sort of spiritual twilight.
Modified immorality based on cleverness guides millions of people. Modified dishonesty within the letter of the law is the practice of millions more. Surely the time has come, because the hour is late, when we must decide. And the choice before us is plain, Jehovah or Baal. Christ or chaos. Conviction or compromise. Discipline or disintegration…
I, for one, am tired of hearing about our rights and privileges as American citizens. The time has come, it now is, when we ought to hear about the duties and responsibilities of our citizenship. It’s just as plain and clear as that.
Hypocrisy or Submission to God?
Now let us be honest about it. If we have thrown away our national heritage, if we no longer believe that this Nation was founded under God, if, contrary to what is stamped upon our coins, our trust is not in God but in something else, let us say so. Let us at least not be hypocrites.
A nation led by God would lead the world. The world today has many open doors, open to the gospel of Jesus Christ, peoples ready and waiting for the spiritual leadership that could steer the storm-tossed ark of humanity away from the rocks of war and the shoals of selfishness and greed.
Our own country with all its sophistication is filled with people who are hungry for the Gospel. They are satiated with the materialistic philosophies that filled our stomachs and starved our souls, that supplied gadgets while they forgot God…
Choose Now
One challenge these critical days have flung down to the church people is that we must begin to be truly Christian in all our relationships or stop pretending.
Life magazine in its Christmas issue had a magnificent editorial from which I should like to quote this paragraph:
The lackadaisical days when it didn’t matter much whether you were a Christian or not may be numbered. If the reassertion [of Christianity] grows strong, you may have to declare yourself more definitely than you ever expected as to whether you believe in the Word of Christ or not. This choice, if it is really forced on the Christian world, may be the choice that leads finally to the long-awaited religious revival, a revival born in the hearts of its citizens of her time, who when forced to choose, will find no truth, no comfort and no inspiration elsewhere. (Life magazine, December 27, 1943, pg. 28)
We need a prophet who will have the ear of America and say to her now, “How long will you halt and stand between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him, but if Baal be God, follow him, and go to hell!”
[Prayer] Oh, God, bless America! May our prayer not be an empty whine of selfish pride and arrogant stupidity, but may it rather be a humble contrite plea to the God of all nations to make this land that we love so well worth defending, worth fighting for, worth dying for. Oh, God, help us to make America God’s country.
And now may the love of God the Father, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the abiding fellowship of God the Holy Spirit rest upon us all now and abide with us forevermore. Amen.
About Peter Marshall
Dr. Peter Marshall was born in Scotland in 1902. After completing studies in electrical engineering and working in the coal-mining industry, he immigrated to the United States in 1927. Upon graduating from Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia, he began serving as a Presbyterian pastor.
Peter Marshall served as senior pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., from 1937 to 1949, Beginning in 1947, he also served as the Chaplain of the United States Senate. Peter Marshall suffered a massive heart attack and died at age 47 in 1949.
He died so young how awful!