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From Eternity Past
And the Lord said, “I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken:
for thou hast found grace in My sight, and I know thee.” Still the
prophet did not cease pleading. He now made a request that no human
being had ever made before: “I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory.”
Moses Sees God’s Glory
The gracious words were spoken, “I will make all My goodness
pass before thee.” Moses was summoned to the mountain summit; then
the hand that made the world, that hand that “removeth the mountains,
and they know not” (
Job 9:5
), took this creature of the dust and placed
him in a cleft of the rock, while the glory of God and all His goodness
passed before him.
This experience was to Moses an assurance which he counted
of infinitely greater worth than all the learning of Egypt or all his
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attainments as a statesman or military leader. No earthly power or skill
of learning can supply the place of God’s abiding presence.
Moses stood alone in the presence of the Eternal One, and he was
not afraid, for his soul was in harmony with his Maker. “If I regard
iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”
Psalm 66:18
. But
“the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; and He will show
them His covenant.”
Psalm 25:14
.
The Deity proclaimed Himself, “The Lord, The Lord God, merciful
and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and
sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.”
“Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and
worshiped.” The Lord graciously promised to renew His favor to Israel
and to do marvels such as had not been done “in all the earth, nor in any
nation.” During all this time, as at the first, Moses was miraculously
sustained. At God’s command he had prepared two tables of stone and
had taken them with him to the summit; and again the Lord “wrote
upon the tables the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.”
Moses’ face shone with a dazzling light when he descended from
the mountain. Aaron as well as the people “were afraid to come nigh
him.” Seeing their terror, he held out to them the pledge of God’s
reconciliation. They perceived in his voice nothing but love and en-