Elijah, Cop Killer – If he wears a leather skirt, he must be up to no good

This story makes me think of “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine

And it came to pass that there was this one time when Elijah was on the run from the law and set up camp on top of a hill. It might surprise you that such a well-known prophet was at odds with the legal system, so I’ll explain it to you.

I don’t know if you remember Ahab or not. He was the king of Israel who was shot by an arrow and his dogs licked all the blood off his chariot afterward. Well, that doesn’t really matter because we’re here to talk about his son Ahaziah today. Ahaziah was a naughty little boy who liked Baal instead of Jehovah. Therefore it wasn’t surprising to anyone that after he injured himself by falling out of his upper bedroom through the window lattice he sent a messenger to ask the “Lord of the Flies” if he would recover.

Ok, this “Lord of the Flies” thing may have confused you so I’ll explain. The various English translations of the bible call this god: Baal-zebub, Baalzebub, or Beelzebub. No matter how it’s written in English though, it means “Lord of the Flies.” This “Lord of the Flies” character was a God in Ekron. Therefore, not only was Ahaziah choosing to seek advice from some dumb fly god, he went looking for a foreign one, as if Israel had no gods of its own.

Hopefully you’ve been reading my stories for long enough now to know that Jehovah doesn’t like playing second fiddle to anyone, even if that someone has power over flies (which is a serious thing in the Middle East). Well Jehovah went to his buddy Elijah and said, “I need you to intercept Ahaziah’s messengers and tell them it was stupid to go to get advice from a foreign fly god when there is a perfectly good god here in Israel, and that particular Israeli God is named JEHOVAH! Well, Jehovah says Ahaziah is never going to get out of bed. He’s gonna die, so there! Neener neener!”

Elijah obediently delivered his message and then went up to the top of his favourite hill to hang out. After hearing Elijah’s prophecy concerning the King’s death, the messengers turned around and headed back to Ahaziah’s place to deliver the news. Ahaziah was surprised to see them so soon and asked what was going on. The messengers told the King about their little encounter with Elijah, but they hadn’t thought to ask his name so they told the king he was really hairy and was only wearing a leather skirt.

The king immediately recognized this as Elijah the Tishbite. He wanted to have a little chat with Elijah so he asked local law enforcement to bring him in for some questioning. The police captain was a little nervous about bringing in some guy wearing a leather skirt so he took along 50 of his men. When they got to Elijah’s hill the captain said, “Hello man of God. Please come down. The king would like to speak with you.”

Of course I have no clue why Elijah acted like this, but in response to the police captain’s request he said, “Oh yeah? Well if I’m a man of God like you say, then fire is going to come out of heaven now and burn up you and your men.” Then fire did come down from heaven and 51 families were suddenly without what was probably their sole source of income. No matter how you look at it, that’s a whole lot of women who were suddenly forced to turn to prostitution to feed their kids. Way to go Elijah, you stupid jackass!

The King still wanted to talk to Elijah, so he sent another captain and once again, Elijah provided 51 men with a fiery death. The THIRD captain decided to try a different tactic. Instead of asking Elijah to come down off the hill he begged for his life and the lives of his men. Because Jehovah LOVES to see men grovel, he sent an angel to tell Elijah not to kill this group of men, but go with them to meet the king instead. So, Elijah went to see the king and said to him, “Because you sent messengers to ask Baal-zebbub the God of Ekron if you were going to die from injuries you sustained by falling out your window, Jehovah has decided that you are going to die now. The end.”

So Ahaziah died, but only after Jehovah and Elijah were very careful to punish all those police officers and their families.

Ref: 2 Kings Chapter 1

Elijah vs. Priests of Baal – The best solution for any religious debate is mass murder

Seriously, you had to kill all of them?

Ahab the King of Israel was a worshiper of Baal, not a worshiper of Jehovah. He and his wife, Jezebel were such devout followers of Baal that they had been working to exterminate all the prophets of Jehovah. Elijah was the most famous prophet of Jehovah at this time and he decided one day he needed to do something about the situation. He went had a chat with Ahab and proposed a friendly little prophet contest between himself and all the prophets of Baal.

Ahab was ok with this so he gathered up 450 prophets of Baal and spread the word about the contest so there would be a large audience. After everyone had gathered together Elijah explained the rules: “OK people, listen up. The prophets of Baal and I are each going to build a big pile of wood, throw a couple of oxen on it and then pray to our respective gods to answer with fire. The god that can burn the oxen on his own is the true god. The prophets of Baal have the first turn.”

The prophets of Baal got an early start with their praying but by noon, nothing had happened. Elijah decided to have a little fun with this and said, “Hey losers, what’s the matter? You know what? I bet your god is probably sleeping in. You’re just not praying loud enough to wake him up. It’s ok though. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

Finally evening rolled around with nothing happening on the Baal side and Elijah announced it was his turn. “Listen up. I’m gonna have a go at this now. We’re gonna have to make a few changes first though. I need you to dig a trench around my altar and pour barrels of water over the wood until the trench fills up. Oh, and I need to throw a bunch of rocks in there too.”

After the changes were implemented Elijah cast Flame strike (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Flame_Strike). He made a perfect roll of 15d6 resulting in 45 points of divine damage and 45 points of fire damage. The spell consumed the oxen, the wood, the water, and the stones. The audience was stunned. They immediately feel to the ground and proclaimed life-long dedication to Jehovah.

This wasn’t quite enough for Elijah who immediately shouted, “Hey, grab all those prophets of Baal. Don’t let them get away!” Then Elijah killed all 450 of them with his bare hands, one at a time. This is of course the only unbelievable part of the story. There’s no way someone could kill 450 people without stopping to take a break. I just don’t buy it. Well, unless of course that person is Samson, but that’s another story.

Ref: 1 Kings 18:1-40

Elisha and the mean kids from Bethel - Proving that God is the most badass of badasses

This one is more like a Sunday School lesson than normal

Elijah was this super badass Old Testament prophet. He worked in Israel in a time when most of the Hebrews had stopped worshiping Jehovah and were chillin’ with the Phoenician gods instead. He did cool stuff like making the calling down fire from heaven (flame strike, anyone? http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Flame_Strike) and making the rain stop for three and a half years to prove how much cooler Jehovah was than some dumb Phoenician god, that can’t kill people with fire from heaven or cause a draught that kills tons of unbelievers. The Mormon prophet Joseph Smith made sure the Mormons would forever think Elijah was cool by teaching that he was the last prophet to hold the Melchizedek priesthood before the time of Jesus Christ. He and Moses (also a murderer) gave the Melchizedek priesthood to Peter, James, and John, and then later to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery (another early Mormon leader).

After Elijah got old he went for a walk with his buddy Elisha. He turned over the mantle of prophet-hood to Elisha and climbed into a burning chariot that rode up a whirlwind into heaven. You know, like you do. In fact, I’m a little surprised that Joseph Smith didn’t ride a flaming chariot into heaven before they shot him. This whole flaming chariot thing reminds me of Helios a little http://www.theoi.com/Titan/Helios.html. It’s a good thing we know the OT is factual or I might be tempted to think they were just borrowing stuff from other mythologies.

Anyway, after Elisha became the new prophet he showed off a little by parting a river so he could walk across on dry land and throwing salt into a dried-up spring to make the water flow again. Then one day he was out walking and a bunch of kids saw him. They got really excited by how funny he looked and literally dozens of them ran out of their city (Bethel) to make fun of him for being bald. They said mean, hurtful things like “go up, thou bald head” and stuff. Well, Elisha wasn’t going to let people make fun of the prophet so he called upon the almighty and cursed those kids. Then two bears ran out of the woods and ripped 42 of the kids into pieces.

Elisha is also famous for telling the Israelites to cut down all the trees in Moab. That will teach those damn trees to mess with Israel.

Ref: 2 Kings 2:23-25