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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
Beware of Him, and obey His voice, provoke Him not; for He will not
pardon your transgressions: for My name is in Him.”
The Hebrews were cruelly unbelieving and basely ungrateful in
their impious request: “Make us gods, which shall go before us.” If
Moses was absent, the presence of the Lord remained; they were not
forsaken. The manna continued to fall, and they were fed by a divine
hand morning and evening. The cloudy pillar by day and the pillar
of fire by night signified the presence of God, which was a living
memorial before them. The divine presence was not dependent upon
the presence of Moses. But at the very time that he was pleading with
the Lord in the mount in their behalf, they were rushing into shameful
errors, into transgression of the law so recently given in grandeur.
Here we see the weakness of Aaron. Had he stood with true moral
courage and in boldness rebuked the leaders in this shameful request,
his timely words would have saved that terrible apostasy. But his
desire to be popular with the congregation, and his fear of incurring
their displeasure, led him to cowardly sacrifice the allegiance of the
Hebrews in that decisive moment. He raised an altar, made a graven
image, and proclaimed a day in which to consecrate that image as
an object of worship and to proclaim before all Israel: These be the
gods which led you out of Egypt. While the top of the mount is still
illuminated with the glory of God, he calmly witnesses the merriment
and dancing to this senseless image; and Moses is sent down from the
mount by the Lord to rebuke the people. But Moses would not consent
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to leave the mount until his pleadings in behalf of Israel were heard
and his request that God would pardon them was granted.
The Tables of the Law Broken
Moses came from the mount with the precious record in his hands,
a pledge of God to man on condition of obedience. Moses was the
meekest man upon the earth, but when he viewed the apostasy of Israel
he was angry and jealous for the glory of God. In his indignation he
cast to the ground the precious pledge of God, which was more dear to
him than life. He saw the law broken by the Hebrews, and in his zeal
for God, to deface the idol that they were worshiping, he sacrificed the
tables of stone. Aaron stood by, calmly, patiently bearing the severe
censure of Moses. All this might have been prevented by a word from