“And who is like your people Israel, THE ONE NATION on the earth whom God went to redeem for himself as a people – to make for yourself a name by great and awesome deeds, by driving out nations from before your people whom you redeemed from Egypt” (I Chronicles 17:21). For many long centuries God simply ignored all other nations, sending them no prophets, making no effort whatsoever to reveal Himself to them.
“For yours are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6).
“He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and his judgements to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any nation; and as for His judgements they have not known them” (Psalm 147:19-20). There was no Egyptian, Assyrian or Babylonian Moses. Those nations had no Book of the Law, no Psalmist, no Elijah or weeping Jeremiah!
“In Judah God is known; His name is great in Israel (and nowhere else). In Salem is his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in Zion” (Psalm 76:1-2). When Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh’s court and told Pharaoh, “Thus saith, the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go,” Pharaoh spoke the utter truth when he replied, “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go. I KNOW NOT THE LORD, neither will I let Israel go” (See Exodus 5:1-2). Even Moses didn’t know who the Lord was, telling God “Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, ‘The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you,’ and they shall say to me, ‘What is his name?’ What shall I say unto them?” (See Exodus 3:13).
“Truly God is good to Israel” (Psalm 73:1). Many forget, if they have ever come to understand that “salvation belongs to the Lord” (Psalm 3:8). God calls all the shots in this matter of granting eternal life and immortality to members of the human family. In every sense of the word, He is “the Lord (or master) of the harvest” of salvation. (See Matthew 9:38). All of God’s true spokesmen – both prophets and apostles – have understood this, as well as every truly anointed teacher of the Word of God. Moses understood this great truth early on and was not one bit perplexed or confused about the fairness and justice of God when charging Israel, “but of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, YE SHALL LET NOTHING THAT BREATHES REMAIN ALIVE, but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you…” (Deuteronomy 20:16-17). The command was all inclusive. All were to die: infants, children, grandmothers, the blind, the infirm – “let nothing that breathes remain alive!”
Most it seems, who read such words rush past them as though they were intruding on a dark side of God – a side of God that cannot be explained. After all it is apparent that God is ordering the execution of not only hardened and jaded adults, but also the death of infants, small children and elderly grandparents! Of course the problem with most is that they don’t understand what Moses fully understood. Moses had already been given the basic knowledge of God’s plan of the ages, for the author of Psalm 90 was Moses, who wrote, “You turn man to destruction, and (later) say, ‘Return O children of men (that is, return to life via a resurrection); for a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past (to us humans), and like a watch in the night. You carry them away like a flood (swiftly); They are like (one) asleep (as they shall be awakened at God’s appointed time via a resurrection)” (Psalm 90:3-5). God has a plan, folks, and a wondrous plan it is. God help you to understand.
Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley