The Deliverer (21 page)
“We can surely do it,” Caleb insisted. “We can take them.”
“What about it, Joshua?” Moses asked. “Can we defeat them?”
Joshua paused for a moment and looked at Caleb’s face, beet red with emotion.
“Yes, yes, we can,” he answered ever so haltingly. “There will be casualties, but we can take them if the Lord is on our side.”
The men of the camp arrived at the door of Moses’s tent, demanding they come out.
Joshua and Caleb followed Moses and Aaron outside and then ripped their clothes and addressed the assembled people of Israel.
“What is the matter with you people? Where is your courage? The land we walked through and scouted out is a very good land—very good indeed. If God is pleased with us, He will lead us into that land, a land that flows, as they say, with milk and honey.”
“He will give it to us as He promised our ancestors,” Caleb shouted, raising his staff high above his head.
“Just don’t rebel against God!” shouted Joshua. “Don’t listen to those cowards who went with us, and don’t be afraid of those people we found on the land that belongs to us if only we will take it. Why, we’ll have them for lunch! They have no protection because God is on our side. Don’t be afraid of them!”
“We can’t lose,” Caleb cried out, trying to assure them.
I was beginning to feel a little patriotic myself at the fervor of Caleb and Joshua. I believed they could do it and would have joined up with them right there on the spot if I could have. Unfortunately for them, however, the cowardly scouts had done such a good job of terrifying the people that instead of rushing to join up, the whole crowd was up in arms and talking of hurling stones at all four of the men.
Whoosh!
A wind kicked up, so strong it knocked over many of the people. Moses and Aaron were leaning into their staffs for balance as Caleb and Joshua shielded their eyes from the bright light invading the night. If the people thought they were afraid before, they were about to learn what real terror was. There neither was nor is anything in the universe to compare to the wrath of God when Ruah Ha Kadosh splits the atmosphere as the glory of God Almighty descends into the earth realm and all created things bow to His presence.
They were on their knees, but I was face down in the dirt as the bright glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting, and every Israelite saw it. God was in the house.
The voice of God rumbled to Moses. “How long will these people treat Me with contempt? How long will they refuse to trust Me? And with all these signs I’ve done among them! I’ve had enough.”
“No, wait, Lord,” Moses pleaded.
“Don’t talk to Me about them anymore, and don’t pray for them. I will send a plague and kill them.”
“No, don’t say that, my Lord.” Moses struggled to stand.
“Don’t fret; I’ll keep the promise I made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I’ll give the land to you. I’ll make you into a nation bigger and stronger than they ever were.”
“But You can’t, my Lord. The Egyptians will hear about it. They’ll say You delivered this people from Egypt with a great show of strength and then abandoned them. The Egyptians will tell everyone. They’ve already heard that You are God, that You are on the side of this people, that You are present among them, that they see You with their own eyes in Your cloud that hovers over them and in the pillar of cloud that leads them by day and the pillar of fire at night. If You kill this entire people, all the nations that have heard what has been going on will say, ‘Since God couldn’t get these people into the land that He had promised to give them, He slaughtered them out in the wilderness.’”
Whether or not the people on their knees could hear God, I couldn’t say, but they could certainly hear Moses, and they knew he was pleading for their very lives. They continued to be very quiet and to listen as Moses cried out to God to spare them.
“Now, please, let the power of the Master expand, enlarge itself greatly along the lines You laid out earlier when You said You were their God. Remember who You are: slow to get angry and huge in loyal love; forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin; still, never just whitewashing sin. But extending the fallout of parents’ sins to children into the third, even the fourth, generation.”
I tried to lift my face out of the dirt to shout, but I could only manage to mumble. “So that’s what He was doing back there!” I was always excited whenever I learned something new about God. “Months ago when God began talking about Himself in the third person, He was writing the intercession Moses would need today to stay His hand of wrath against the nation. Moses probably doesn’t even remember where he heard the words he’s saying to describe God.”
I shook my head the best I could and marveled at the cleverness of God. Who would ever have thought God’s words of intercession released into the atmosphere could be snagged by an intercessor later on when the stakes were really high? I wondered if God had done this before. Satan was not going to like this at all.
Moses continued, “Please forgive the wrongdoing of this people out of the extravagance of Your loyal love just as all along, from the time they left Egypt, You have been forgiving this people.”
Moses put his face down into the dirt near me and waited for God to answer.
“I forgive them, honoring your words,” God said. Big surprise. “But as I live and as the glory of God fills the whole earth, not a single person of those who saw My glory, saw the miraculous signs I did in Egypt and the wilderness, and who have tested Me over and over and over again, turning a deaf ear to Me, will set eyes on the land I so solemnly promised to their ancestors. No one who has treated Me with such repeated contempt will see it.”
Then God added a PS: “My servant Caleb is a different story. Both he and Joshua have a different spirit; they follow Me passionately. I’ll bring them into the land that they scouted, and their children will inherit it.”
The people heard it all and began dispersing, relieved they would live to see another day. They were so glad to still be alive that they didn’t even care about not being allowed to enter the Promised Land. They were in no mood to argue about the terms of the deal.
Moses and Aaron stayed behind. They knew God had more to say to them.
“Since the Amalekites and Canaanites are so well established in the valleys, for right now change course and head back into the wilderness, following the route to the Red Sea.”
They nodded but still did not speak. Experience had taught them that a pause in a conversation with God did not mean the conversation was over.
“I will spare them, as you have asked,” God continued. “But how long is this going to go on, all this grumbling against Me by this evil-infested community? I’ve had My fill of complaints from these grumbling Israelites. You can tell them again they aren’t going into the land. Their corpses are going to litter the wilderness—everyone twenty years and older who was counted in the census, this whole generation of grumblers and grousers. Not one of them will enter the land and make their home there, except for Caleb and Joshua.
“You can tell them that their children, the very ones they said would be taken for plunder, I’ll bring in to enjoy the land they rejected. These children will live as shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, living with the fallout of the unfaithfulness of their parents until the last of that generation lies a corpse in the wilderness. They scouted out the land for forty days; their punishment will be a year for each day, a forty-year sentence to serve for their sins.”
By now, both Moses and Aaron were facedown in the dirt from the weight of God’s anger. They didn’t dare move, and neither did I.
“I, God, have spoken. I will most certainly carry out these things against this entire evil-infested community, which has banded together against Me. In this wilderness they will come to their end. There they will die.”
Smoke filled the tent, and the light of the glory lifted. But none of the three of us could get up. I’m pretty sure I passed out right away. When I awoke, Aaron and Moses were gone.
It got bad for some of the Israelites after that. Right away God confronted the ten scouts who had come back with a bad report and sent fear through the people. He released a consuming plague on them, and they died quickly. Only Joshua and Caleb escaped His wrath.
Moses didn’t want to deliver God’s word to the people, but with good sense, he feared God more than he feared them. So when he told the people of Israel everything God had said against them, they mourned long and hard. But early the next morning they were up like nothing had happened and started out for the high hill country.
“We’re here; we’re ready. Let’s go up and attack the land that God promised us. We sinned, but now we’re ready.”
I shook my head in disgust at them.
“A little late!” I wanted to shout out. I could have told them a few things about God’s mercy and grace. There’s a limit to it. Humans never think about it until it’s too late. Part of the problem is God’s own fault. He never should have taught Abraham about intercession. When people see how many times sincere intercession will stay the hand of God’s wrath, they presume it will always be that way.
“It’s not always that way!” I finally did shout, though no one could hear me. “Look at me; I’m living proof that God has a limit. It wasn’t even my fault. I wasn’t grousing and whining like you people. You deserve God’s punishment. I didn’t. I was innocent. I would never have rebelled against God. It was an accident.”
When Moses heard what the people were planning, he ran to stop them.
“Why are you disobeying God’s command yet again? This won’t work. Don’t attack. God isn’t with you in this. You’ll be beaten badly by your enemies. The Amalekites and Canaanites are ready for you, and they’ll kill you. Because you would not obediently follow God and trust Him, God is not going to be with you in this. Don’t go! I can’t help you this time.”
But they went anyway. Recklessly and arrogantly they climbed to the high hill country. If I had been one of them and turned around to see that neither the ark of the covenant nor Moses had budged from the camp, I would have turned around and run for cover. Not them, though. They simply didn’t understand the line they had crossed with God. They were in the battlefield barely half an hour when the Amalekites and the Canaanites came out of the hills and attacked, beat them, and chased them all the way down to Hormah.
They called out to God for help, and He did just what He said He would do—nothing.
W
HY DO YOU
think this is good news?” Satan’s eyes were narrow and even colder than usual as he glared at me.
The longer I was in exile with this egocentric maniac, the surer I was that I could understand humanity—and I daresay God too—better than I could understand the thought processes of this mercurial personification of everything evil. Why wouldn’t I think it was good news? Moses had failed. God had failed. The Israelites who were rescued and assured they were a chosen people on the way to their Promised Land were now going to die in the desert. Even Moses wasn’t going to make it across because of an insignificant (in my mind) episode when he struck the rock for water like he did the first time they hit a drought. God had clearly told him to speak to the rock the second time, not pound on it. What possible difference it made as long as the water came out was lost on me.
Satan was winning the game with God for control of the earth. He wouldn’t have to deal with the Israelites for at least a generation, maybe more. There would be no challenge to the land he now ruled so effortlessly. He had every reason to celebrate; why was he so macabre? He continued to stare at me, and although I wouldn’t daresay what I was thinking, I knew I’d better say something.
“I thought you would be pleased to know the ex-slaves are all going to die in the desert.”
“All of them?” His tone gave him away. It was not a real question, so I needed to be careful about my answer.
“Well, uh, most of them—certainly the most important ones. The ones who had witnessed God’s miracles in Egypt will not cross over. He was clear about that. Only the younger ones who were too young to know what was going on have a chance to go in sometime in the future.”
“So, God is going to kill all of the first generation for angering Him?” Another trick question.
“Yes and no. Not exactly but eventually.” I was beginning to get confused. “He won’t kill them directly. They’ll die in the desert of the usual stuff—disease, accidents, things like that.”
Satan didn’t respond; he just continued to stare at me.
“He’ll let them wander in the desert until the first generation dies. Could be sooner, could be later,” I stated with certainty.
“You have no idea how long this will take, is that right?”
I was straining now to remember the fine print of what God had said to Moses and Aaron. Suddenly I remembered.
“Now I remember. Forty years. God said they would wander in the desert for forty years—one year for each day the scouts had been gone.”
Satan rose from his throne and walked over to one of the demon guards and stared at him directly in the eyes. The guard did not move or blink, but he was beginning to sweat. No one could ever be sure whom Satan was mad at or what he was mad about, so the guard was as nervous under that icy stare as I would have been. Finally, Satan turned, and his eyes locked on me again. I heard the guard exhale slowly.
“Do you think I want the slaves to die in the desert?” Another trick question; now I was sweating. My eyes darted quickly around the demonic ranks to see if anyone was going to give me a little help. Every face was expressionless. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know the answer Satan was looking for.
“Don’t you, sir?” I managed to get the words out.
With one claw under his chin and the other under his elbow, he rolled his eyes around the room as if searching for an answer on the ceiling.