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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 3
“Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto
Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants? There
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is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say to us, Make brick;
and, behold, thy servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own
people. But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle; therefore ye say, Let us
go and do sacrifice to the Lord. Go, therefore, now, and work, for
there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks.
And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in evil
case, after it was said, Ye shall not minish aught from your bricks of
your daily task. And they met Moses and Aaron, who stood in the
way, as they came forth from Pharaoh. And they said unto them, The
Lord look upon you and judge, because ye have made our savor to be
abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put
a sword in their hand to slay us. And Moses returned unto the Lord
and said, Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil-entreated this people? Why
is it that thou hast sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in
thy name, he hath done evil to this people. Neither hast thou delivered
thy people at all.”
As the children of Israel charged all their suffering upon Moses,
he was greatly distressed, and felt almost like murmuring because the
Lord delayed to deliver his people. They were not yet prepared to be
delivered. They had but little faith, and were unwilling to patiently
suffer and perseveringly endure their afflictions, until God should work
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for them a glorious deliverance.
“Then the Lord said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will
do to Pharaoh, for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with
a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land. And God spake
unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord; and I appeared unto
Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty;
but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them. And I have also
established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan,
the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I have
also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians
keep in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant.”
Many years had the children of Israel been in servitude to the
Egyptians. Only a few families went down into Egypt, but they had
become a large multitude. And being surrounded with idolatry, many
of them had lost the knowledge of the true God, and had forgotten his