Basic HTML Version
unless it's my house. And as we have guests quite often, we go
right ahead and correct them. I believe I have seen some fruits of
consistency taking place lately. But we suffer their manners, so
to speak, in many different ways. And that seems to be what God
had done with the children of Israel, suffered their manners. The
New King James Version reads: "put up with their ways" for 40
years. When the time came to bring the descendants of Israel out
of Egypt, God prepared the human leader, and he brought them out
with a high hand. But I don't believe that he intended it to take
40 years to get them into the land of promise.
Israel left Egypt on Passover and arrived at Mount Sinai and
received the law at Pentecost. Conceivably they could have gone
right ahead and taken the land of promise on the Day of Trumpets,
and perhaps enjoyed the Feast of Tabernacles with the abundance of
the harvest. If not in that one year, surely leisurely, the next.
But 40 long years God patiently waited to get on with his plan.
Let's look at Psalm 78 and get another view of this. In Psalm 78
David had been recounting all the mighty miracles of God in
bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt, and all the mighty
miracles in preserving them in the wilderness. He says, verse 32:
"For all this they sinned still, and believed not for his wondrous
works. [They kept forgetting the mighty, powerful workings of
God.] Therefore [listen to this] their days did he consume in
vanity, and their years in trouble." And the New King James
Version says, "their days He consumed in futility." Forty years of
futility. Forty years Israel went around and around in that
wilderness, getting deeper and deeper in their groove,
accomplishing nothing.
Then in verse 41, "Yea, they turned back and tempted God,
and limited the Holy One of Israel." Incredible. Limited the Holy
One of Israel. They did not remember his power.
I thought how Mr. Armstrong recently has reminded us of that
time during the '70s when men whom he had put in charge of the day-
to-day affairs here at Pasadena began to liberalize the sound
doctrine of God's Church. Men who lost sight of God's purpose and
began to let the world get to them rather than them getting to the
world with God's message, and began to water down his doctrine,
did not believe his wondrous works, his almighty works, his great
miracles, the miracle-working power of God who heals, the miracle-
working power of a God who's able to work in the minds of people
whom he would call, and open their minds, and give them an
intellectual awakening by the power of his Spirit to understand
things that they could never understand before. I believe they
limited the Holy One of Israel. As a result, God removed his
blessings. We can honestly say that God consumed their days in
futility, because, during that period, for the first time in the
history of God's Church in this era, there was negative growth.
Can a group of little human beings stop an Almighty God from
doing what he wants to do? No! No, God's purposes will stand.
But can a group of little human beings alter the time agenda for
God doing what he wants to do? The Bible speaks loudly that it
can, especially when his time frame involves their faith, and their
cooperation, and their commitment. We're told that ancient Israel