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No.5.
pp. 229 - 232
A rhyme tells of a dear old and tired charwoman who, at the end of her days, looked
forward to heaven where `she could do nothing for ever and ever'. The facetious skeptic
talks of playing on a harp on a cloud. But what says the Scriptures:
"Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? . . . . . Know ye not that we
shall judge angels?" (I Cor. 6: 2, 3).
"And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed unto Me; that ye
may . . . . . sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Luke 22: 29, 30).
"In My Father's house are many mansions . . . . . I go to prepare a place for you"
(John 14: 2).
These are not the only references to our future state, but if few in number, our finite
human conditions could not envisage the spiritual conditions of God's other kingdoms for
which this life is a preparation. Israel was an earthly example of such a plan of God.
The children of Israel were delivered by God out of the bondage and idolatrous
conditions of Egypt and began in their wilderness journey a course of preparation for the
future service of God. Their immediate goal which He had promised them was a land
flowing with milk and honey:
"I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them
up out of that land into a good land and large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey"
(Exod. 3: 8).
On the threshold of this land God ordered selected men to be sent to reconnoiter the
land and bring back specimens of its fruits:
"And they returned from searching of the land after forty days . . . . . and said . . . . .
surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it . . . . . But the men (not
Joshua and Caleb) that went up . . . . . brought an evil report" (Numb. 13: 25, 27, 31,
32).
The men of Israel had not faith in the God of their fathers but, ignoring that God had
kept faith with them and graciously given them material witness of the blessings of the
land, they discounted the power of God to aid them in the overthrow of its occupants as
the Lord had promised. Rather they impugned God and accused Him of wanting to
destroy them and their little ones in the wilderness. In judgment God kept that nation
impotent in the wilderness until all that generation of adult males had died, namely for
thirty-eight (38) years:
"And the space in which we came from Kadesh-barnea, until we were come over the
brook Zered, was thirty and eight years; until all the generation of the men of war were
wasted out from among the host, as the Lord sware unto them" (Deut. 2: 14).