The Reformation Under Samuel.
By A. B. Simpson
“And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and serve him only; and he will deliver you out of the hands of the Philistines.” 1 Sam. 7:3. The great reformation under Samuel began in the complete failure of the people themselves and the demonstration of their utter inability to lift themselves out of their helpless condition. God has to let us come to the end of ourselves before he can interpose for our deliverance. A mother stood on the deck of a ship, hardly restrained from throwing herself into the sea to save her drowning boy, while men stood by and waited as he sank again and again. At last, as he rose for the third time, a brave seaman leaped in and caught the sinking lad and held him safely while both were drawn to the deck. “Why didn’t you save him sooner?” cried the frantic mother, as her boy slowly came back to consciousness. “Because,” said the sailor, “I had to wait until his strength was gone, or he would have drowned both himself and me.” And so God has to wait until our strength is gone before he can save or sanctify or heal us. This was Israel’s state when Samuel came to the front as the leader of the new reformation. Politically, the country was under the power of the Philistines. Morally and socially, the people were corrupt, and the fearful example of Hophni and Phineas, the very priests of God, who turned the sanctuary at Shiloh and the very services of Jehovah’s worship into an orgy of license, could not fail to have a fatal influence upon the manners and the morals of all the people. Even Eli himself, who was still recognized as the ecclesiastical and judicial head of the nation, while honest and sincere in his purpose, was a helpless tool in the hands of his family. And so the very fountains of justice and religion were utterly corrupted, and all that was lacking was the crisis hour when this system of iniquity should fall to pieces by its own weight, as it really did at last. The critical moment came when the Philistines once more invaded the land, and in a moment of presumptuous despair the desperate leaders of Israel’s forlorn hope brought out the ark of God and placed it in front of the armies of Israel. The Philistines realized at once their danger and their opportunity. They were fighting now not only Israel, but Israel’s God, and so with redoubled valor the captains roused the host to do their best, and by one victorious blow not only to crush their enemies, but to secure for themselves the supernatural secret of their victorious power. As old Eli sat by the tabernacle court at Shiloh that eventide, a cloud of dust appeared upon the distant horizon, and a swift runner rapidly dashed along until he stood breathless before the aged judge. As he dashed along, the people had already caught from his manner and his cries the fearful tidings, and a great cry arose throughout the city. Eli heard the tumult, and called the messenger to his side. The aged patriarch of ninety-eight was too blind to see his form and could but dimly hear his words, but he eagerly asked him for tidings from the field, and as those fearful words fell upon his ear, “Israel is fled, . . . there hath been also a great slaughter among the people, thy two sons, Hophni and Phineas, are dead, and the ark of God is taken,” that last9word broke the old man’s heart, and he sank back in a swoon and fell heavily to the ground, and as they picked him up his neck was broken and his life was gone. Among the tragedies of that terrible day was the dying anguish of the wife of Phineas and the significant name she left with her parting sigh of agony to the poor little orphan child which came that moment into life as the memorial of his country’s shame, Ichabod, “the glory is departed.” Yes, it was the deepest, darkest hour of the nation’s wo, but it was the darkness just before the dawn and deliverance was near. The next stage in the preparation of the coming reformation was the revelation and vindication of God as himself the nation’s hope. The one great design of Israel’s history as a nation was to be the witness and revealer of God, and all the supernatural manifestations of their glorious past were intended not to show the greatness of their leaders, but the glory and all-sufficiency of their divine Lord and Leader. Sometimes, therefore, God had to let the human instruments utterly fail that he himself might be the more gloriously vindicated in his own all-sufficiency and power. And so we find in the later history of the nation that there came a time when the kings and the prophets and priests of Judah and Israel completely failed to glorify Jehovah among the nations or accomplish his purpose for the world, and yet this became the most illustrious day of his own manifestation. He had to let the very kingdom of Judah and Israel pass away in ignominious defeat, and even the temple itself become a heap of smoldering ashes before the victorious power of Nebuchadnezzar; and yet, in that very hour, he called four humble Hebrew youths in Babylon to stand for him amid the furnace of fire and the lions’ den and so to vindicate his own glory and supremacy that in the hour of his pride Nebuchadnezzar, the mightiest king and conqueror of the earth, was compelled to acknowledge that Jehovah was the only true God and to issue a decree calling upon his subjects to worship the God of Daniel as the true God and the sovereign Ruler of the universe. And a little later he compelled Cyrus Artaxerxes and even Xerxes, the proud despots of Persia, to recognize his supremacy, to protect his people and even to send back the captives from Babylon to rebuild the city and the temple at Jerusalem. And so here we find in this period of Israel’s history that while the nation failed and the priesthood failed and the very ark of God seemed to fail, God himself became the more gloriously vindicated even in the midst of his enemies. No sooner had the ark of God been taken by the Philistines than a long train of desolation followed in its path wherever it went. They set it up in the temple of Dagon among their gods, and in the morning Dagon was fallen on his face before the ark of the Lord. They set him up again, and the next morning he was not only fallen down but shattered to pieces before the awful presence of the God of the ark. The most humiliating and distressing plagues began to fall upon the people, and they begged that it should be sent away from Ashdod, but no sooner had they taken it to Gath than they begged that it be removed. And so they took it to Ekron, but the people of Ekron protested, saying, “They have brought about the ark of the God of Israel to us, to slay us and our people.” And so at last they called a council and determined to send it back to Israel once more. So, preparing a costly present and choosing two milch kine, they put it on a cart and committed it to the God whom it represented in some superstitious way to their terrified minds. But it needed no human hand to guide that holy symbol of Jehovah’s presence. Contrary to their own instincts, those unwilling kine went steadily forward at a divine command which they could neither understand nor disobey, lowing as they went, because their hearts carried them backward to their calves; yet on they went at the bidding of a power that drove them in the opposite direction, until they reached Beth-shemesh, where the Levites met the sacred ark, and took the cattle that bore it and offered them up in sacrifice unto the Lord, and presented the costly offerings before the Lord. Thus God showed that he could vindicate his own glory and lead his own way without the help or wisdom of man. And even a more solemn lesson still had to be learned, for as the men of Beth-shemesh presumed to approach the holy symbol of the presence of God with forbidden familiarity, they were smitten with death. This is the lesson that we all need to learn before we are prepared to truly represent God, that God does not need us or our strength, but that we need to understand him and know that he is all-sufficient for his own work and that what he requires of us is that we know him, bear witness to him, and truly represent him. He is able to take care of his own cause if we only give him right of way. “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.”—Rev. A. B. Simpson, in Missionary Alliance.