“Contents,” Ensign, June 1986, 1
Ensign
June 1986
Volume 16 Number 6
On the cover: Illustrated by G. Allen Garns.
On the back cover: Home teachers and visiting teachers, we call on you to extend yourselves with renewed dedication. We want you to do something you may not have been doing. We want you to watch, to feed, to tend, and to care for the flock and, in the event that some are temporarily lost, we challenge you to find them. We repeat to you the same charge the Lord gave Peter: “Feed my lambs. … Feed my sheep.” Why? Because of your love for your brothers and sisters and your desire for them to have joy in our Father’s kingdom.—President Ezra Taft Benson
Inside front cover: Frontier Prophet, by D. J. Bawden, approximately 24″ high, bronze, 1981.
Life on the American frontier in the nineteenth century required much strenuous labor, and Joseph Smith, Jr., learned to work hard to help his family survive. In his youth he spent time clearing farmland, building homes for his family, and building sheds and fences for the farm. He helped his father cultivate and harvest crops, worked in the family’s barrel shop, and hired himself out to work for neighbors.
Inside back cover: Mount Carmel, photography by Richard Cleave.
Because of the wickedness of King Ahab and his people (about 875 B.C.), the Lord withheld rain from Israel. After three years, He called Elijah to go to King Ahab’s court, where the prophet proposed a contest to prove who was really God—the Lord or Baal.
The Israelites gathered to Mt. Carmel, where the priests of Baal built an altar and placed a bullock upon it. They cried to Baal for an entire day to burn their sacrifice, but received no response. Elijah then put his bullock on the altar and poured four barrels of water over it. The Lord immediately sent fire which consumed not only the sacrifice, but also the water and the altar. The people were convinced of the Lord’s power; they took the priests to the river Kishon and slew them.
Meanwhile, Elijah prayed to the Lord to end the long drought while his servant climbed to the crest of Mt. Carmel to look for a rain cloud. After seven trips up, the man finally saw a cloud in the shape of a man’s hand. Elijah told King Ahab to return to his capital at Jezreel because the rain was coming. (See 1 Kgs. 18.)
Inside back cover: Tradition says that these caves on the western slope of Mt. Carmel sheltered many fugitives, including Elijah.
Inside back cover: The northeastern summit of Mt. Carmel, traditional site of the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal.
Inside back cover: The Jezreel Valley, looking east from the crest of Mt. Carmel. The small stream in the valley is the river Kishon. Note the mountain’s steep slope, up which the servant likely ascended.