Elijah is a challenge. There are more implausible miracles involving him than there are Christ. I’m talking about the ravens and the widow’s jar of meal, more than the widow’s son being raised.

But not many read the histories. They are in the lectionary. And the first part of this passage is that Elijah decreed famine on the Land, for they had abandoned God.

 1 Kings 17:1-24

¹Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the LORD the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” ²The word of the LORD came to him, saying, ³“Go from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. ⁴You shall drink from the wadi, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” ⁵So he went and did according to the word of the LORD; he went and lived by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. ⁶The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the wadi. ⁷But after a while the wadi dried up, because there was no rain in the land.

⁸Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, ⁹“Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” ¹⁰So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” ¹¹As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” ¹²But she said, “As the LORD your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” ¹³Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. ¹⁴For thus says the LORD the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth.” ¹⁵She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. ¹⁶The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah.

¹⁷After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. ¹⁸She then said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” ¹⁹But he said to her, “Give me your son.” He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. ²⁰He cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” ²¹Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” ²²The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. ²³Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, “See, your son is alive.” ²⁴So the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth.”

What can we take from this? Firstly, God looked after those who put their entire trust in him. Elijah was outlawed from Israel. The widow who was fed was a Phoenician, a Philistine.

Secondly, we cannot mock God and call by his name. Those who abandon God are chastised until he gives up. At that point, they are appointed for destruction: Babylon was prosperous, mighty, and conquered many, but fell, and (unlike Egypt and Greece) abandoned.

It is time to return to the Lord. It is not time to follow the progressive narrative.

The concept of Truth is an important one, and why an understanding of the subject is important in any consideration of “Rightness”. The other day I saw floating somewhere on the internet a comment which ran to the affect of, “If you want to offend someone on the Right tell a lie, if you want to offend someone on the Left, tell the Truth”, which I though was pretty close to a practical definition of what it means to be of the Right. Solzhenitsyn, on of the unrecognized prophets of the Twentieth Century understood the significance of this and realised that the fundamental task of man was to live not by lies.

Living the in the Truth involves four fundamental principles as I can see.

The First Principle is the acceptance of the the idea that there is a Truth, in other words there is a reality.
The Second Principle is that we know reality through the empirical experience of it.
The Third Principle is that there is a duty of obedience to it.
The Fourth Principle is that there is a commitment to the free expression of it.
The Fifth Principle is that correct action can only come about through acting within the Truth.

Truth is the foundational pillar of the Right, and any ideological outgrowth which deliberate violates its commitment to it is automatically excommunicated. How the Right differs from Conservatism is that Conservatism prefers old lies to innovative Truth.

In this fallen time, to live for truth is revolutionary and to live for Christ is blasphemous. Live that way regardless.