Why Did Elijah Still Have to Travail So Earnestly in Prayer When God Was Going to Send the Rain Anyway? If He Did Not Pray, Would God Have Refused to?
1) Direct Answer
Elijah travailed because God tied the promised rain to the prayer of faith and a restored covenant order. The promise set the end; prayer was the God-ordained means. If Elijah had refused to pray, the rain would not have come then. God would not break His own order—He would wait for intercession or raise another to ask.
2) Scriptural Explanation
- God promised rain: “Go, show yourself to Ahab; and I will send rain” (1 Kings 18:1). Yet Elijah went up, bowed, and prayed repeatedly until the cloud appeared (1 Kings 18:42–45). James states the link plainly: “He prayed again, and the heaven gave rain” (James 5:17–18).
- The covenant required prayer when heaven was shut: “When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain… if they pray… then hear… and give rain” (1 Kings 8:35–36; see also 2 Chronicles 7:13–14). Elijah’s altar, the people’s turning, and his intercession fulfilled that order.
- God attaches promise to asking: “I will yet for this be enquired of… to do it for them” (Ezekiel 36:37). And, “You have not, because you ask not” (James 4:2).
- When there is no intercessor, judgment continues: “I sought for a man… to stand in the gap… but I found none. Therefore have I poured out my indignation” (Ezekiel 22:30–31).
3) Simple Clarifying Logic
- The decree set the destination (rain), but prayer was the switch that released it in time. Elijah’s travail did not change God’s will; it aligned earth with heaven.
- God doesn’t “refuse” His promise, but He refuses to bypass His Word. No prayer, no release at that moment. Delay is not denial; He honors the means He appointed.
- The sevenfold persistence shows that promises often require persevering faith against resistance until the sign appears.
4) Reinforcing Statement
Now notice—don’t stop at the promise; pray it through. The cloud appears to the one who stays on his knees.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
Jesus on the authority of the Word
54-0217 §4
Elijah the great prophet of old, Jehovah's great witness, when he went to Mount Carmel and called up Israel before Baalim to see which was God; he said, "If Baalim be god, serve him. If God be God, serve Him." When God anointed him with inspiration, gave him a vision and told him how to do things, and he went out there and called all the prophets of Baalim and let them make a sacrifice. They screamed and cut themselves: no god. But Elijah killed a bullock, laid it upon a rock, the altar, and said, "Lord, let it be...
Believest thou this?
50-0716 §79
Elijah went with her to the death chamber, and there walked up-and-down the room, not praying for the baby. Walked up-and-down the room, then took and stretched his body out over the baby. Lord God worked in Elijah. Hallelujah! Oh, Christians. You don't realize what I'm talking about I don't believe. See, looky here. God was in Elijah. And... And Elijah knew it. The woman knew it. And he laid... He knowed. That's the reason he sent that staff. He knowed that everything he touched was blessed, for God was in him. Oh...
The Way back
62-1123 §24
Tell me what man could close the heavens in the days of his prayer? Could Ekron ... the god of Ekron do it? Could the god of Ekron do the things that Elijah did? Certainly not. Showed that there was a living God with Elijah. But this man was so stuckup, and pomped up, till he didn't want to lower hisself to such a thing. But Elijah girded hisself up, went up there and stood in the road. This old woolly-looking fellow standing out there, he didn't have on a clergy coat, and so forth; but he had a woolly face, and ma...
Elijah and the meal-offering
60-0310 §24
You know, God has a way of answering prayer. This little woman had lived true. She had not remarried again. She was staying single to meet her husband in glory. She was an honorable woman. And for weeks the barrel had been going down, down, and her continually praying, and still looked like there was no hope in sight nowhere. You know, there we could get a lesson from that. That if you have prayed, and met all the requirements that God requires you to meet, and still He's silent, He doesn't say anything, and yet yo...
Unbelief does not hinder God
62-0128M §12
And then did you notice? Immediately after Elijah's ministry with that Jezebel, and all the people trying to pattern after her and everything... How he must have rammed and cut that gospel in there that day. Then finally after he done proved God ... that was God---God come down to vindicate it that He was God---then he had a nervous breakdown. He went out and sat under the juniper tree, and wanted to die, and prayed for God to take his life. Forty days and nights he was out there in the wilderness wandering around,...