1 Kings 19:14-18
"14 He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” 15 And the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus. And when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. 16 And Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel, and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place.17 And the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael shall Jehu put to death, and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha put to death. 18 Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”"
Two things should he noted in these verses, Elijah's consciousness of a great loneliness and desolation of spirit in the service of the Lord (10, 14) should not be interpreted as merely the evidence of his depressed state at this point in his experience. In times of moral and spiritual declension there is a great loneliness that comes upon the faithful; this is part of the cost of true cross-bearing; and indeed, from the strategic point of view, God cannot afford to have many of His true servants clustered together in one place. Even seven thousand are not many, scattered throughout a population of many millions!
The other thing is this: God has His seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal. It is they, therefore, who need to be mobilised and made ready in His service. This warrants the closest concentration on their spiritual training and equipment, for with them lies the responsibility - and the hope - of blessing in the future. If this were understood more, it would perhaps prevent a great deal of well-meaning efforts from being wasted, as endless sal- lies are made in the arena of evangelism with ill-equipped and ill-trained forces. The Allies learned this to their cost when they complacently and with their cheerful songs crossed the Channel at the beginning of the last war with scanty and obsolete equipment to meet a ruthless and devastatingly organised war machine. But they did learn, and spent years re-equipping and training their armies into a real fighting force able to match the enemy in battle. The Church, however, has apparently not; anything will do, and anyone can serve, (agnostics and atheists included) in the kingdom of Christ. Is there no limit to our absurd unrealism?