After his amazing victory on Mount Carmel against the prophets of Baal, Elijah fell into deep depression. Not only had he seen God work in a miraculous way, he had proven before Israel Who was the one true God. And yet, almost immediately, Elijah questioned whether God could protect him from Jezebel and (falsely) believed that he was the only faithful believer left in Israel:
I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.
There’s much to learn from this story, both about the vulnerabilities of humans and the kindness of God. For example, I love that the author of 1 Kings includes the detail that God sent an angel to Elijah to help him sleep and cook him food. Also, by informing Elijah of the 7,000 people in Israel who had not bowed a knee to Baal, God was reminding Elijah that He was still very much at work in the world, and that He primarily works through His people.
God has his people everywhere. Often, He uses unlikely candidates to be courageous voices of truth. The new film Truth Rising tells the story of five courageous voices in this civilizational moment.
As a young teenager, Chloe Cole was so completely lost and deceived about who she was, she underwent a double mastectomy attempting to be male. God worked in her life to reveal what was true about who she is, and now, having detransitioned, she advocates for the truth that humans are made in God’s image, male and female. She is now a powerful force pushing back against the darkness.
The story of Seth Dillon and The Babylon Bee is the story of the last decade. First, the popular and funny satirical site was cancelled from one of their most powerful channels of influence for saying what is true. Committed, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, “to live not by lies,” he refused to take a short cut around truth. But God was at work, and how the story turned out shocked everyone.
My friend Katy Faust was a pastor’s wife in the northwest with an anonymous blog. She spoke truth about an ideology that subjects children to the whims of adult desire. Then Katy was doxed by someone who threatened her and her entire church community. God used that incident to make Katy a leading champion for the rights and wellbeing of children worldwide.
Courage is not typically a required qualification for bakers, but it was for Jack Phillips. In one afternoon, Jack took a stand when asked to design a cake with a message that was not true. That stand led to thirteen years of attacks by the state of Colorado, and one of the most consequential First Amendment wins of our lifetime. Again, God was at work.
Perhaps best known among these stories is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose faith journey took her from Islam to atheism to Christ. An activist, political leader, and author, Ayaan has now found what she was looking for and believes deeply that God has placed her as a truth teller in a crucial cultural moment. That’s exactly what she’s doing.
These five stories of courage are fully told in the Truth Rising documentary. What is obvious in each is that God is at work through His people as much today as He was on Mount Carmel through Elijah. We are not alone. We’ve been called to this time and place.
You can stream Truth Rising today for free by going to truthrising.com/colson.
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