Post by Nephi –
I just got done posting about how our journey in the wilderness is so much like that of the children of Israel and Moses. I certainly hope the similarities of our journey ends there. I’ve been told by the Lord that the ship which we will certainly build, will carry us to a Land of Promise. I hope we don’t have to scatter and destroy the current inhabitants we find there.
When the children of Israel finally got to the river Jordan God gave them strength and the command to drive the inhabitants out, scatter them and actually destroy them. How horrible that must have been. Yet, we know God esteems all flesh in one. In other words, He loves all His children. So why would He have the children of Israel (who didn’t have a stellar track record of righteousness themselves) scatter and destroy the children of that land?
Simply put, they had rejected the prophets of God. These people that were inhabiting the land beyond the river Jordan, had the words of God. They had been a blessed people. They rejected the prophets and they rejected their God and therefore they forfeited their claim on this precious land. Think back a few blogs. Is that not exactly what the prophets testified would happen to Jerusalem? They could have kept the land if they had been righteous. But this people had rejected every word of God. They were ripe in iniquity, and the wrath of God had come.
God cursed the land against them and then He blessed it for our fathers. He cursed the land unto their destruction and blessed it to our fathers to their obtaining power over it. Now here are some basics – God created the Earth to be inhabited and He created His children to inhabit it.
He will raise up a righteous nation and He will destroy a wicked nation. He will lead some righteousness to precious lands and He will destroy the wicked. That’s what God does.
He rules high in the heavens, the heavens are His throne and the earth is His footstool. He loves those that love Him and will have Him be their God. Because He loved our fathers and covenanted with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He kept His covenant and delivered them out of Egypt.
If you remember, even though He delivered them, they hardened their hearts and God had to straighten them out from time to time. One time He sent fiery flying serpents among them and after they were bitten, He prepared a way for healing if they would only look. They were so hard that many died just because they were too stubborn to do the simple act of looking.
Even after all the times they reviled against Moses and God, He still led them by His matchless power. Now all these years later, these children of Israel who now inhabit Jerusalem must finally be destroyed.
Just as the initial inhabitants of the land ripened in iniquity and were destroyed, the current inhabitants will be as well. That is why the Lord commanded my father to get us all out.
The tremendous sadness is that my brothers are just like the children of Israel. They are so slow to remember the Lord their God. They have seen an angel, he spoke with them, they have heard his voice and He has even spoken in the still small voice but they were beyond feeling. So He had to speak to them with the voice of thunder which shook the earth. Yet it is so hard for them to have a soft heart.
My soul is so full of anguish, my heart hurts. I am so afraid they will be cast off forever.
Right now, I am so full of the Spirit of God, my frame has no strength.
(Book of Mormon | 1 Nephi 17:32 – 47)
