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Patriarchs and Prophets
“I am that Bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness,
and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven.... If
any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I
will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
John
6:48-51
. And among the promises of blessing to God’s people in the
future life it is written, “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of
the hidden manna.”
Revelation 2:17
.
After leaving the wilderness of Sin, the Israelites encamped in
Rephidim. Here there was no water, and again they distrusted the
providence of God. In their blindness and presumption the people came
to Moses with the demand, “Give us water that we may drink.” But his
patience failed not. “Why chide ye with me?” he said; “wherefore do
ye tempt the Lord?” They cried in anger, “Wherefore is this, that thou
hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our
cattle with thirst?” When they had been so abundantly supplied with
food, they remembered with shame their unbelief and murmurings,
and promised to trust the Lord in the future; but they soon forgot their
promise, and failed at the first trial of their faith. The pillar of cloud that
was leading them seemed to veil a fearful mystery. And Moses—who
was he? they questioned, and what could be his object in bringing them
from Egypt? Suspicion and distrust filled their hearts, and they boldly
accused him of designing to kill them and their children by privations
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and hardships that he might enrich himself with their possessions. In
the tumult of rage and indignation they were about to stone him.
In distress Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do unto this
people?” He was directed to take the elders of Israel and the rod
wherewith he had wrought wonders in Egypt, and to go on before the
people. And the Lord said unto him, “Behold, I will stand before thee
there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there
shall come water out of it, that the people may drink.” He obeyed, and
the waters burst forth in a living stream that abundantly supplied the
encampment. Instead of commanding Moses to lift up his rod and call
down some terrible plague, like those on Egypt, upon the leaders in
this wicked murmuring, the Lord in His great mercy made the rod His
instrument to work their deliverance.
“He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as
out of the great depths. He brought streams also out of the rock, and
caused waters to run down like rivers.”
Psalm 78:15, 16
. Moses smote