Page 58 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

Joshua failed to carry out to the full God‟s “cruel” commands and permitted a few
roots of the seed of the serpent to remain, that his people encountered serious trouble
in later years. It is one of the immutable divine purposes that His testimony people

shall remain distinctly separate. He does not want them in Egypt (the world) nor does
He want the world in the church.

The various conquests by the surroundings nations during the troublous era of the

Judges, projected by the kings of Mesopotamia, Moab, Canaan, Midian, Philistia, and
Ammon, were for the purpose of unseating the testimony people from their control of
the land, and were permitted by Jehovah as punishment for their turning aside to the
worship of false gods. In each case He raised up a deliverer who threw off the yoke of

the invaders.

The warfare was continued down through the period of the kings. Especially
clearly was it defined in the case of Saul versus David. Saul himself seems to be a

later type of the anointed cherub, who was once anointed and then refused full
obedience to God and turned aside to self-will. Saul‟s failure to carry out the
command of Jehovah for the complete annihilation of Amalek had its later
repercussion in the events recorded in the Book of Esther as we shall mention a little

later. Saul‟s mistake in this connection is a common one with Christians today. He
claimed that he was saving the sheep and cattle of Amalek for sacrifices to Jehovah.
We should clearly understand that Jehovah-God does not want Amalekite sacrifice or
service. He does not want nowadays service that is in compromise with His enemies

and in disobedience to His expressed principles. He wants obedience, not human
expedients.

The act of projecting himself into the priest‟s office sealed Saul‟s rejection from

the testimony and it was not long before he was trying to kill David. Saul became the
agent of the serpent and his hatred toward David was supernatural even as was the
hard-heartedness of Pharaoh. David not only maintained God‟s testimony, being a
man after His own heart, but he was the ancestor of the special seed. It was David‟s

jealousy for the glory of God and his unswerving faith in the overwhelming odds, that
gave him the victory over power of Jehovah to overcome, even against apparently
Goliath of Gath, who was himself a type of Satan as well as one of his seed.

That day in the Valley of Elah, Christ was facing Satan. There was demonstrated
in a remarkable way the principle of spiritual warfare wherein “God hath chosen the
foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things
of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” With deadly aim, the stone

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