290
Patriarchs and Prophets
will—the people whom He was to make the keepers of His law—this
very people Satan was seeking to keep in obscurity and bondage, that
he might obliterate from their minds the remembrance of God.
When the miracles were wrought before the king, Satan was on
the ground to counteract their influence and prevent Pharaoh from
acknowledging the supremacy of God and obeying His mandate. Satan
wrought to the utmost of his power to counterfeit the work of God
and resist His will. The only result was to prepare the way for greater
exhibitions of the divine power and glory, and to make more apparent,
both to the Israelites and to all Egypt, the existence and sovereignty of
the true and living God.
God delivered Israel with the mighty manifestations of His power,
and with judgments upon all the gods of Egypt. “He brought forth
His people with joy, and His chosen with gladness: ... that they might
observe His statutes, and keep His laws.”
Psalm 105:43-45
. He rescued
them from their servile state, that He might bring them to a good land—
a land which in His providence had been prepared for them as a refuge
from their enemies, where they might dwell under the shadow of His
wings. He would bring them to Himself, and encircle them in His
everlasting arms; and in return for all His goodness and mercy to them
they were required to have no other gods before Him, the living God,
and to exalt His name and make it glorious in the earth.
During the bondage in Egypt many of the Israelites had, to a great
extent, lost the knowledge of God’s law, and had mingled its precepts
with heathen customs and traditions. God brought them to Sinai, and
there with His own voice declared His law.
Satan and evil angels were on the ground. Even while God was
proclaiming His law to His people, Satan was plotting to tempt them
to sin. This people whom God had chosen, he would wrench away,
in the very face of Heaven. By leading them into idolatry, he would
[335]
destroy the efficacy of all worship; for how can man be elevated by
adoring what is no higher than himself and may be symbolized by his
own handiwork? If men could become so blinded to the power, the
majesty, and the glory of the infinite God as to represent Him by a
graven image, or even by a beast or reptile; if they could so forget their
own divine relationship, formed in the image of their Maker as to bow
down to these revolting and senseless objects—then the way was open