Angels From David’s Time to the Babylonian Captivity
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throughout all the coasts of Israel. Now therefore,” said the prophet,
“advise thyself what word I shall bring again to him that sent me.”
The king’s answer was, ... “Let us fall now into the hand of the
Lord; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of
man.”—
Patriarchs and Prophets, 747, 748
.
Swift destruction followed. Seventy thousand were destroyed
by pestilence. David and the elders of Israel were in the deepest
humiliation, mourning before the Lord. As the angel of the Lord
was on his way to destroy Jerusalem, God bade him stay his work of
death.... The angel, clad in warlike garments, with a drawn sword in
his hand, stretched out over Jerusalem, is revealed to David, and to
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those who are with him. David is terribly afraid, yet he cries out in
his distress and his compassion for Israel. He begs of God to save
the sheep. In anguish he confesses, “I have sinned, and I have done
wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray
thee, be against me, and against my father’s house.”—
The Spirit of
Prophecy 1:385, 386
.
The destroying angel had stayed his course outside Jerusalem.
He stood upon Mount Moriah, “in the threshing-floor of Ornan the
Jebusite.” Directed by the prophet, David went to the mountain, and
there built an altar to the Lord, “and offered burnt offerings and peace
offerings, and called upon the Lord; and he answered him from heaven
by fire upon the altar of burnt offering.” “So the Lord was entreated
for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel.”
The spot upon which the altar was erected, henceforth ever to be
regarded as holy ground, was tendered to the king by Ornan as a gift.
But the king declined thus to receive it.... “David gave to Ornan for the
place six hundred shekels of gold by weight.” This spot, memorable
as the place where Abraham had built the altar to offer up his son, and
now hallowed by this great deliverance, was afterward chosen as the
site of the temple erected by Solomon....
From the very opening of David’s reign, one of his most cherished
plans had been that of erecting a temple to the Lord. Though he had
not been permitted to execute this design, he had manifested no less
zeal and earnestness in its behalf.—
Patriarchs and Prophets, 748, 750
.
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The Lord, through His angel, instructed David, and gave him
a pattern of the house which Solomon should build for Him. An
angel was commissioned to stand by David while he was writing out,