There's a Crack in Your Armor Perry Stone

hours with cries to their god, the heavens were brass. The Bible says: And so it was, at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, “Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.” So they cried aloud, and cut themselves, as was their custom, with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. And when midday was past, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. But there was no voice; no one answered, no one paid attention. —1 KINGS 18:27–29 Just as with the cutters of Baal, oddly, several religions use cutting as a way of allegedly gaining the attention of their god. For example, here is a report given by scholars of the rites of the Hindu goddess Matha: There was a multitude of ten or twelve thousand people assembled. In a short time a man advanced into the center of the group, pretending that the goddess had entered into him; pulling off his turban and tossing his long hair over his face, he began to leap and shake, uttering a noise occasionally like the bark of a dog. As his excitement increased, he beat himself with a chain, and made incisions in his tongue with a sword. Having taken the blood, he rubbed it on the foreheads of the spectators. By and by the infection spread, and others pretended to be in