They do not say to themselves, ‘We should fear the Lord our God, who gives us autumn and spring rains in their seasons, who makes sure we have the harvest at the right time.’
Now Elijah the Tishbite was a prophet from the settlers in Gilead. “I serve the Lord, the God of Israel,” Elijah said to Ahab. “As surely as the Lord lives, no rain or dew will fall during the next few years unless I command it.”
When he thunders, the waters in the skies roar. He makes clouds rise in the sky all over the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.
Do foreign idols have the power to bring rain? Does the sky itself have the power to send down showers? No, it is you, Lord our God. You are our only hope, because you are the one who made all these things.
Your evil will bring punishment to you, and the wrong you have done will teach you a lesson. Think about it and understand that it is a terrible evil to turn away from the Lord your God. It is wrong not to fear me,” says the Lord God All-Powerful.
So the rain has not come, and there have not been any spring rains. But your face still looks like the face of a prostitute. You refuse even to be ashamed of what you did.
Surely you are afraid of me,” says the Lord. “You should shake with fear in my presence. I am the one who made the beaches to be a border for the sea, a border the water can never go past. The waves may pound the beach, but they can’t win over it. They may roar, but they cannot go beyond it.
Those people will ask how to go to Jerusalem and will start in that direction. They will come and join themselves to the Lord. They will make an agreement with him that will last forever, an agreement that will never be forgotten.
After this, the people of Israel will return to the Lord their God and follow him and the king from David’s family. In the last days they will turn in fear to the Lord, and he will bless them.
So be happy, people of Jerusalem; be joyful in the Lord your God. Because he does what is right, he has brought you rain; he has sent the fall rain and the spring rain for you, as before.
“I held back the rain from you three months before harvest time. Then I let it rain on one city but not on another. Rain fell on one field, but another field got none and dried up.
If you do this, you will be true children of your Father in heaven. He causes the sun to rise on good people and on evil people, and he sends rain to those who do right and to those who do wrong.
Yet he proved he is real by showing kindness, by giving you rain from heaven and crops at the right times, by giving you food and filling your hearts with joy.”
The Lord will open up his heavenly storehouse so that the skies send rain on your land at the right time, and he will bless everything you do. You will lend to other nations, but you will not need to borrow from them.
Brothers and sisters, be patient until the Lord comes again. A farmer patiently waits for his valuable crop to grow from the earth and for it to receive the autumn and spring rains.
These witnesses have the power to stop the sky from raining during the time they are prophesying. And they have power to make the waters become blood, and they have power to send every kind of trouble to the earth as many times as they want.