Elijah’s prayer enters regions where prayer had never gone before. The awful, mysterious and powerful regions of the dead are now invaded by the presence and demands of prayer. Jesus Christ refers to Elijah’s going to this widow as mainly, if not solely, for her good. Elijah’s presence and praying keep the woman from starving and brings her son back from death. Surely no sorrow is like the bitterness of the loss of an only son. With what assured confidence Elijah faces the conditions! There is no hesitancy in his actions, and there is no pause in his faith. He takes the dead son to his own room, and alone with God he makes the issue. In that room God meets him and the struggle is with God alone. The struggle is too intense and too sacred for companionship or for spectator. The prayer is made to God and the issue is with God. The child has been taken by God, and God rules in the realms of death. In His hands are the issues of life and death. Elijah believed that God had taken the child’s spirit, and that God could as well restore that spirit. God answered Elijah’s prayer. The answer was the proof of Elijah’s mission from God, and of the truth of God’s Word. The dead child brought to life was a sure conviction of this truth: “Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth.” Answers to prayer are the evidences of the being of God and of the truth of His Word. The immortal test of Elijah made in the presence of an apostate king, and in the face of a back-slidden nation and an idolatrous priesthood on Mount Carmel, is a sublime exhibition of faith and prayer. In the contest the prophets of Baal had failed. No fire from heaven falls from heaven in answer to their frantic cries. Elijah, in great quietness of spirit and with confident assurance, calls Israel to him. He repairs the wasted altar of God, the altar of sacrifice and of prayer, and puts the pieces of the bullock in order on the altar. He then uses every preventive against any charge of deception. Everything is flooded with water. Then Elijah prays a model prayer, remarkable for its clearness, its simplicity and its utmost candor. It is noted for its brevity and its faith. Read the account given in the Scriptures: “And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. “Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. “Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. “And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, The Lord, he is God; The Lord, he is God.”