Elijah ranks second to Moses among the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. He spoke words of truth with such power to King Ahab that the weak-willed ruler denounced him as the “troublemaker of Israel." Elijah triumphed over the priests of the Canaanite God Baal in a bloody competition to bring the nation back to faith in Yahweh. Both prophet and miracle-worker, he ended a draught, kept a poor widow’s supply of food from running out, and restored her dead son to life. Elijah was taken into heaven in a fiery, horse-drawn chariot. Rudolph Valentino Bostic, a self-taught artist from Georgia, captures Elijah's dramatic send-off in this week's featured piece of prophetic art from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, a mixed media painting on cardboard now on view on the Bostic profile page in the Sacred Artists section. As Elijah is swept away in billowing flames and clouds, he drops his mantle to his successor, Elisha. (John Kohan)