He found him dismounted, and sitting under the shade of an oak. Hurrying up to him, he said, “Come home with me and eat bread.” The young man answered him as he had answered the king about eating and drinking in this place. But the old man was so eager to have him come that he made up a lie, and said to him, “I also am a prophet as thou art; and an angel spake to me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee into thy house, that he may eat bread and drink water.” This lie prevailed. The man who was proof against danger, against flattery, and against avarice, was overcome by the plausibility of a lie. Notice, now, that it is not a bad man, but a brave and good man, who is thus overcome. Even such a man is not free from dan­ger at this point. Many a man just as brave and true in many particulars has been led to his own undoing by the belief of a lie.

No doubt the old man’s table was spread with the best the house afforded, and the two were enjoying themselves to the utmost when the Spirit of God came upon the old prophet and forced from his lips this solemn sentence: “Thus saith Jehovah: Forasmuch as thou hast been dis­obedient to the mouth of Jehovah, and hast not kept the command which Jehovah thy God commanded thee, but hast come back, and eaten and drunk in this place…thy carcass shall not come to the sepulchre of thy fathers.” The joyful feast ended in gloom. The young man departed with a sense of guilt weighing him down; and he won­dered, no doubt, what mysterious fate was involved in the words which had come from the Lord. He was not long in finding out; for he had gone but a short distance to­ward home when he saw a lion rushing upon him. He sees the glare of the lion’s eyes, he feels the powerful claws as they drag him to the ground; the horrid mouth of the beast is opened upon him, he feels the crushing in of his ribs, and then he feels and sees no more. What do you suppose was uppermost in his mind as his life was being crushed out of him? Was it the thought of the lion, or was it the thought of his sin? Loved ones, what can be the thought of danger or pain when we are dying, compared with the thought that we are dying in sin? God grant that no one of us shall have such an experience.

The same day there came into the city from that road some men who said that they saw the strange sight of a lion standing by the side of a dead man, whom he had slain but had not eaten, and the man’s ass standing by unharmed. The old prophet knew what it meant. He ordered out his ass once more, hastened down the road, found it as the men had said, brought the carcass home with him, and buried it in his own sepulchre. When the sad work was done, be said to his sons, “When I am dead, bury me in the sepulchre where the man of God is buried; lay my bones by the side of his bones.” This was a poor atonement for the ruin which his lie had wrought, but it was the best that he could do.