JOURNEYING | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 6, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 32.

JOURNEYING.

"All things journey; sun and moon, Morning, noon, and afternoon, Night and all her stars."

AND man journeys with them, whether he will or not. The day is likened unto a journey, and so is life. To some it means glorious triumph; to many the journey's end is looked forward to with dread and despair. They have no light but the present, and that present is but temporal. The children of hope have an eternal present.

God called Israel to a journey. The place of starting was Egypt. The goal of the journey was the land flowing with milk and honey. There were many difficulties and perils in the journey of between 300 and 400 miles which the Lord asked them to take between Egypt and the "Pleasant Land." But He led them the very best way, tho not the shortest way. If they had fully believed Him, the journey would indeed have been brief from Rameses to the River of Egypt on the border of the Land of Promise. But they did not fully trust God, and so He led them a longer way that the people might not be frightened by the sight of warlike enemies. They must learn of God, and see His glory, and know His power.

But His Presence went with them every step of the way. Every hour of the day they could see the Pillar of Cloud which enshrouded the divine Presence. Every hour of the night watchers beheld the radiance of the soft light of the Pillar of Fire. By desert paths or mountain passes, by sea shore, or inland arabah, the Pillar of Cloud by day and Pillar of Fire by night led the way. God thus identified Himself publicly with Israel.

First of all to Sinai they journeyed, there to meet God, to hear His voice, to learn His character, to partake of His providence, to be blessed by His compassion. There He kept His children for nearly a year, feeding them daily with the corn of heaven, quenching their thirst with water from the riven rock, that they might know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

After the education at Sinai—an education so full and efficient and faithful on God's part; so reluctantly received, so unbelievingly witnessed, so poorly applied, on the part of the people—Israel again took up their journeying to the Promised Land (Numbers 10), only eleven days' distance from Horeb.

Very orderly were to be their journeys. There were to be special calls by their special trumpets. There were four standards under which the hosts went forward, three tribes under each standard. Between these divisions marched the priests and Levites with the tabernacle of the Lord. Our God is a God of order.

It was to be a missionary journey. All who would in heart unite with them might go with them. From Egypt came some, a "mixed multitude." Moses, the visible leader under God, invites Hobab the Midianite to go with them in these winning words: "We are journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you; come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel." And when Hobab refused, that other winning plea was made, that he might be a help unto them, and would share in the good things of God.

So they started, the Ark of God with His glorious Presence going before to seek them out a resting place, and giving rest every moment to every soul who would receive that law in his heart. When the Ark set forth, Moses said, "Rise up, O Jehovah, and let Thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate Thee flee before Thee." And when it rested, he said, "Return, O Jehovah, unto the ten thousands of the thousands of Israel." Num. 10:33-36.

Would to God they had joined with Moses in all this glad faithful worship, following where He led, resting where His Presence indicated. But carnal lustings, idolatries, provocations, murmurings (1 Cor. 10:1-11) marked their course. The eleven days' journey to the Land of Milk and Honey became a crooked, weary, wandering, wilderness journey of thirty-eight long years of striving with God, till the unbelieving and rebellious died by the way.

We, too, as they, are journeying, if we are not Egypt-dwellers. God has called us from the Egyptian darkness of sin to His eternal inheritance. He calls us out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, to the mount of God. He wants us to know Him. He would write His law upon our hearts, even as He longed to write it upon the hearts of Israel of old. He would feed us day by day with the Bread of Heaven, fresh from God's storehouse. He would quench the thirst of our souls continually with life-giving draughts from the never-failing Fountain. He would lead us all the way. He would imbue us with the same Spirit, so that we should say to every dweller of earth's drear deserts, "Come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel."

This is the journey, dear soul in the Egypt of sin, God has called you to take. Will you do it? Will you leave Egypt with its flesh pots, its lustings, its abominable idolatries, its science falsely so called, its eternal disappointments, its darkness of despair, for the journey with God through the wilderness to the land of eternal Light and Beauty? Rough tho the way may be, the journey is pleasant with Him, and its end is life and peace.