Make a Donation
About The Author
Holy Day Calendar
Free Online Bibles
Bible Reading Plan
|Get Daily Bible Study on Facebook||Get Daily Bible Study on Twitter Follow @WayneBlank|
Sunday, March 31 2019
A Bible Journey, 162: How The Nation Of Israel Almost Became The Nation Of Moses
"Let Me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven: and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they"
Although commonly used interchangeably today, "nation" and "country" are actually two very different matters. A "nation" refers to a particular family of related people i.e. their nativity, while a "country" is the sovereign territory that a nation occupies. Israel was a nation (see A Bible Journey, 46: The Family At The Heart Of A Nation) long before it became a country.
The nation of "Israel" was chosen for a Messianic purpose. The Messiah could have come from any nation, but the LORD (Who was and is Jesus Christ; see The Real Jesus: The Word Of The LORD God and A Bible Journey, 56: The Sacred Name) created a nation, a people, for His purpose alone.
Israel would not have ever otherwise existed if the LORD had not created it from a man named Jacob (see A Bible Journey, 32: Thy Name Shall Be Called No More Jacob, But Israel). Jacob was only one, not the only one, of the grandsons of righteous Abraham, the man from Iraq (see the Fact Finder question below).
"32:27 And he said unto him, What is thy name?
The Israelites eventually began to conveniently ignore why they were the "chosen people." Many began to arrogantly presume that they were somehow superior to other nations - even though they never rose above the morality or character of the nations around them. They nevertheless assumed that the LORD was blessing and defending them for their sake, while totally ignoring that the only reason that they were anything special is because the Messiah of all of humanity would be born from them - as their prophets constantly reminded them throughout their entire history, including by Jacob himself (see A Biography Of Jacob: Blessings And Prophecies).
The Messiah could have been born of any other nation that the LORD created for that purpose. Israel itself wasn't even vital to the coming of the Messiah after it was created. If not for Moses, the LORD would have replaced Israel as the Messianic nation when the refused to obey Him.
"9:1 Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven, 9:2 A people great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, Who can stand before the children of Anak! 9:3 Understand therefore this day, that the LORD thy God is he which goeth over before thee; as a consuming fire he shall destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy face: so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly, as the LORD hath said unto thee.
If not for the pleading of Moses, the Israelites, as the "chosen people," would have been revoked when they turned their backs on the LORD and made a golden calf at Mount Sinai. The LORD would have created a new nation, from Moses: "Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven: and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they."
"9:7 Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the LORD thy God to wrath in the wilderness: from the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt, until ye came unto this place, ye have been rebellious against the LORD. 9:8 Also in Horeb ye provoked the LORD to wrath, so that the LORD was angry with you to have destroyed you. 9:9 When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water: 9:10 And the LORD delivered unto me two tables of stone written with the finger of God; and on them was written according to all the words, which the LORD spake with you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly.
It was a principle that the Messiah, and before Him, John the Baptist, later reiterated yet again, after the Israelite people at that time lost sight of the reason and purpose of the "chosen people": "3:9 And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. 3:10 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire." (Matthew 3:9-10 KJV).
Moses issued the same warning, first to the generation that didn't make it home (see A Bible Journey, 155: Their Journey Back To Egypt Today and A Bible Journey, 154: How The Rebellion Changed History), and then to the generation that did make it to the Promised Land (see A Bible Journey, 158: God's Law To The Children).
"9:15 So I turned and came down from the mount, and the mount burned with fire: and the two tables of the covenant were in my two hands. 9:16 And I looked, and, behold, ye had sinned against the LORD your God, and had made you a molten calf: ye had turned aside quickly out of the way which the LORD had commanded you. 9:17 And I took the two tables, and cast them out of my two hands, and brake them before your eyes.
Fact Finder: Why did the LORD command Abraham to immigrate from his native Iraq to the land of Canaan?
This Day In History, March 31
307: After divorcing Minervina, Roman Emperor Constantine (see Emperor Constantine's Sun Dogs) married Fausta, the daughter of the former Roman Emperor Maximian.
627: Muhammad, the inventor of the Islamic religion (see A History Of Jerusalem: Constantine and Muhammad), survived a siege of 27 days at Medina (Saudi Arabia) by Meccan forces under Abu Sufyan. Known as the Battle of the Trench.
1492: In the same year that they employed Christopher Columbus to explore the "new world" (see Thanksgiving In History and Prophecy a map of the four voyages of Columbus) King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain (their youngest daughter, Catherine of Aragon was the first wife of King Henry VIII of England; their divorce eventually resulted in Henry breaking away from the Church of Rome and creating his own Church of England) began enforcing their Edict of Expulsion.
All Jews in Spain who would not accept immediate conversion to Roman Catholicism were to be physically put out of the country. About 100,000 trudged across the frontier into Portugal, where they were in turn expelled 4 years later; 50,000 went across the straits into North Africa, or by ship to Turkey. About 50,000 chose to become Catholics and remain, including the senior rabbi and most of the leading families. By the end of July, the expulsion of those who would not convert was an accomplished fact. The destruction of Spanish Jewry is considered by some to be the most momentous event in Jewish history since the mid-second century A.D.
1854: The Treaty of Kanagawa was signed between the U.S. and Japan. Signed under an offshore show of threatening U.S. naval force commanded by Admiral William Perry, it opened Japan-U.S. trade.
1866: Spanish naval forced bombed the harbor of Valparaíso, Chile.
1889: The Eiffel Tower in Paris was officially opened to the public.
1903: Richard Pearse, a New Zealand farmer and inventor, achieved a powered flight in an aircraft that he built. Despite the propaganda that has ignored their achievements, Pearse was among a number of true aircraft pioneers around the world (including Gustave Whitehead of Germany, Alexander Fyodorovich Mozhayskiy of Russia and Clement Ader of France - the French word "aviation" itself was named after Ader's aircraft) who flew a heavier-than-air vehicle long before the Wright Brothers became the first to fly in the U.S. (see also Who Was The First To Fly?).
1909: Construction of RMS Titanic began at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast. The "unsinkable" ocean liner sank on its first voyage, less than three hours after scraping an iceberg in the North Atlantic.
1909: Serbia submitted to Austrian control over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1917: The U.S. purchased some of the Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25 million.
1939: All fighting ceased in the three year Spanish Civil War, completing a victory by Fascist forces, who were assisted by German pilots, more than 50,000 Italian troops and other pro-Fascist volunteers against Spanish republicans. The Second World War began a few months later, in September, when Germany invaded Poland.
1949: The British colony of Newfoundland joined Canada as the 10th province.
1949: Winston Churchill said that the atomic bomb was the only thing that kept the Soviet Union from taking over Europe (see Russia Or Europe - Who Has Been The Invader?).
1954: The Soviet Union offered to join NATO.
1966: The Soviet Union launched Luna 10. It became the first space vehicle to orbit the Moon.
1971: Lt. William Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment (later reduced to 20 years, of which he actually served almost nothing before being quietly released) for the My-Lai massacre of 500 women and children in Vietnam.
1979: The military relationship between Britain and Malta ended after 181 years with the departure of the destroyer HMS London from Valetta Harbor.
1991: The Warsaw Pact formally ceased to exist.