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Testimonies for the Church Volume 4
Moses prevailed with God to spare the people, but because of their
arrogance and unbelief the Lord could not go with them to work in a
miraculous manner in their behalf. Therefore in His divine mercy He
bade them adopt the safest course and turn back into the wilderness
toward the Red Sea. He also decreed that, as a punishment for their
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rebellion, all the adults who left Egypt, with the exception of Caleb
and Joshua, should be forever excluded from Canaan. They had utterly
failed to keep their promise of obedience to God, and this released Him
from the covenant that they had so repeatedly violated. He promised
that their children should possess the goodly land, but declared that
their own bodies should be buried in the wilderness. And the ten
unfaithful spies, whose evil report had caused Israel to murmur and
rebel, were destroyed by the power of God before the eyes of the
people.
When Moses made known to Israel the will of God concerning
them, they seemed sincerely to repent of their sinful conduct. But the
Lord knew that they sorrowed because of the result of their evil course,
rather than from a deep sense of their ingratitude and disobedience. But
their repentance came too late; the just anger of God was awakened,
and their doom was pronounced, from which there was no reprieve.
When they found that the Lord would not relent in His decree, their
self-will again arose, and they declared that they would not return into
the wilderness.
In commanding them to retire from the land of their enemies, God
tested their apparent submission and found that it was not real. They
knew that they had deeply sinned in allowing their rash feelings to
control them and in seeking to slay the spies who had urged them to
obey God; but they were only terrified to find that they had made a
fearful mistake, the consequences of which would prove disastrous
to themselves. Their hearts were unchanged, and they only needed
an excuse to occasion a similar outbreak. This presented itself when
Moses, by the authority of God, commanded them to go back into the
wilderness.
They had rebelled against His commands when He bade them go
up and take the land that He had promised them, and now, when He
directed them to retreat from it, they were equally insubordinate, and
declared that they would go to battle with their enemies. They arrayed
themselves in warriors’ dress and armor, and presented themselves
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