Do you suppose it’s possible that we would ever have a real prophet show up in our country? You know, like Elijah, Isaiah, or Jeremiah—one of those guys. Someone who would tell us the truth about what we are doing, where we are going wrong, and where it would finally take us? If a prophet really came, would we pay him any mind?

I don’t mean will the politicians in Washington pay him any mind. What about you and me? Of course, for a man to be a genuine prophet, he has to have a reputation as a prophet. He has to be recognizable. He has to be believable. People who claim to be a prophet are a dime a dozen. How can you know for sure? Well, it can’t be a matter of guesswork. It has to be based on something real.

Take Elijah, for example. Why should anyone have paid attention to Elijah? It certainly wasn’t his appearance. He was a hairy man and wore a leather girdle. I expect he would have looked right at home on a Harley Davidson motorcycle. And it wasn’t elegance of speech. It is hard to imagine a preacher with fewer words. But what words they were. Let’s hear his message to King Ahab in 1 Kings 17.