Elijah, a prophet whose story is related in the Bible, correctly predicted the coming of drought and famine to the land of Israel. When the famine came, Elijah then heard God tell him to go to a widow woman in a town called Zarephath. God had "commanded" the widow to "sustain" him, came the message (see I Kings, chap. 17). Elijah's visit must have come as quite a surprise to the widow. Far from feeling in a position to feed an extra mouth, the woman was mourning her inability to feed even herself and her child with the little oil and meal she still had. But knowing the infallibility of God's direction, Elijah confidently prophesied, "Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth."

And that's the way it turned out. The little food the widow had at hand proved entirely sufficient. She and her family were fed, and so was the prophet. As First Kings records it, "And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah."

When facing a great lack, or any problem, we might wish that God would direct a twentieth-century Elijah to us, to speak powerful words with the same insight and effectiveness as in the case of the widow. The good news is that such things can and do still happen. The key to their happening is seeing what the Bible means when it says that the marvellous provision occurred "according to the word of the Lord" [italics added] which He "spake by Elijah." It wasn't Elijah's own words in and of themselves that had an impact. So we don't need a human Elijah to be with us to experience that same impact on our lives. What we do need is to discover our own ability to discern "the word of the Lord"—the message of Truth, God—that Elijah was faithfully relating.

The message of divine Truth is always the promise—the prophecy—of good overriding evil, or error. It is God's law that right should outweigh wrong, and this law is self-enforcing. God's law of good outlaws lack, and sentences sickness, pain, and distress to annihilation. This is what Elijah knew, what enabled him to speak with divine authority. It is what Christ Jesus proved even more completely centuries later. If we, too, are to know the unshakable nature of good, we must cultivate our spiritual perception.

Science and Health, calling Elijah by his other Biblical name, Elias, defines his identity in this way: "Elias. Prophecy; spiritual evidence opposed to material sense; Christian Science, with which can be discerned the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold; the basis of immortality" (p. 585).

It is essential for all of us to become our own Elijah— our own spiritual interpreter of what the material senses say is going on. This spiritual seeing reveals the reality of abundance where there appears to be lack, and harmony and health where there seems to be discord. It results in practical healing. God is speaking specifically to each one of us as we need to hear Him.

This was proved to me one day when I was facing what I feared would be an unpleasant and fractious meeting. A foreboding thought of it was also disturbing many of the others who would attend. When I had a free moment at work, I opened The Christian Science Monitor and took a brief look at its article on the Science of Christ. The title stood out to me like a beacon. It read, "Toward Growing Unity," which of course was exactly the opposite of what seemed pending. I could see that this was the voice of Truth and a timely message of spiritual prophecy, assuring me that the all-knowing divine Mind, God, was already meeting my need. I was awakened spiritually.

I saw that the reality of being is spiritual unity—man's oneness with God, Spirit—and that the inevitable consequence of understanding this truth is unity. If all the people in our meeting were united to God, then their unity with each other was assured.

I went to the meeting with a different expectancy, and it turned out to be a joyous and harmonious occasion. Many others commented on it afterward. The voice of prophecy, "the word of the Lord," was proved true.

Through many different avenues, God is still speaking clearly to inspired human thought. The opposer of God—described as the "liar" by Christ Jesus and as the "carnal mind" by Paul—would love to spread the lie that God has spoken in the past but no longer speaks today. Believing this can result in our making the same mistake today as some people made in Jesus' time. They could read in the Scriptures of "the law" and "the prophets" and see that God had indeed spoken through Moses and Elijah. But they were blind to His present ability to speak through Jesus, or indeed through Jesus' loyal follower Paul, whom they called "a pestilent fellow" (Acts 24:5).

In our day, we should revere the Bible prophets and, in particular, Christ Jesus. We shouldn't, however, limit God by believing that anything exists to prevent His new and fresh communication to us through our current understanding of the words and works of these seers. We ought not believe God has allowed the spirituality of their day to be somehow diluted or eroded by time.

To do less than to expect to experience the continued messages of God to man is to dishonor those who have earlier given their lives to discerning His messages. To look to the past longingly involves accepting the supposed reality of a power able to silence the voice of the infinite and eternal Deity. Jesus and the prophets—and all faithful Christians who have followed them—have proved that God spoke to them. But in doing so they were also proving the eternal law that God communicates His spiritual ideas at all times.

God spoke by Elijah. He is speaking to us—and by us—still.