DEVARIM

Words [of Moses]

13 Take you wise men, and understanding [anashim chachamim], and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you.

Ecclesias have to do with God's business

This should be borne in mind in the election of officers. God requires for His work men of "sound mind"—men who know what is right and are prepared to faithfully and energetically pursue it. Erratic, superficial, lazy, self-pleasing workers are not wanted. If brethren everywhere would note these points in their ecclesial appointments the truth would prosper.

Men should not be placed in office simply to please them, or as a means of keeping them in the truth. If any prove unsuitable or incompetent for the positions they hold, then others should be appointed. Brethren should not be timid in these matters. Moses chose men who were "able" and "wise" (Exod. 18:25; Deut. 1:13), and our choice should be governed by the same considerations.

Similar care and discrimination were enjoined upon the first-century brethren (1 Tim. 3.; Tit. 1.). Let us remember that a meeting takes on the spirit of its leaders—wrangling, crotchety, worldly, agnostic leaders make a like meeting.

If the truth is to prosper, we must have proper leaders—men well-grounded in the truth, men of experience; of good character, kind, sympathetic, meek but courageous.

The appointment of such rests upon the brotherhood generally—hence its responsibility. We live in evil times, when things have a downward tendency. We require to be alive to the times, and to set our faces against retrogression, latitudinarianism*, Laodiceanism.

Bro AT Jannaway

The Christadelphian, Sept 1902

16 And I charged your shofetim [judges] at that time, saying, Hear the cases between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the ger [stranger] that is with him.

Aristocracy of the kingdom

By the aristocracy is meant the princes of the state. In the commencement of Jehovah's kingdom these were Moses, Aaron for the tribe of Levi, and eleven others, one for each tribe. The sons of Aaron also were sacerdotal princes; to whom may be added the Levites of the houses of Kohath, Gershom, and Merari.

Besides these, Moses selected the chief of the tribes, wise men, and known, and made them heads over them, captains over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and captains over tens, and officers among their tribes.

These were they who possessed the kingdom. Flesh and blood, mortal and corruptible men. So that Yahweh's kingdom under its first constitution may be defined a divinely organized system of government in Israel administered by sinful men under sentence of death.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Sept 1851

From this we may draw the useful conclusion that the arrangements we are obliged to make in this latter day in the absence of divine direction, will receive the divine sanction and favour provided they are made in the sincere spirit of desiring to help the Lord's work, and are in harmony with the requirements of that work as specified in the word of Jesus and the apostles. The use of the printing press and the holding of meetings for lectures are of this nature. We may hope presently to hear that the Lord approves of them as a doing of our best in an age when His purpose requires that He should be silent.

Is there any shadowing of the work of Christ here? Here is Moses surrounded by twelve heads of the tribes, helping him in the work he has on hand, by ideas of their own, in harmony with that work and accepted because useful as well as in harmony. If we look at the twelve apostles, whether in the day of suffering or the day of glory--the day of the wilderness or the day of the land of promise--we may get a glimpse of a counterpart.

In the work done by the apostles in the taking out of a people for his name, their co-operation with the Lord was not an automatic one. It was the cooperation of intelligent faithfulness which devised measures according to the exigencies of the occasion, such as when they appointed a successor to Judas, or convened a council to consider the controversy that had arisen at Antioch. So in the day when they

"shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel",

we may imagine, without being guilty of any freak of speculation, that they will, out of the fulness of wise and loyal hearts, devise measures of service that will go beyond what may be actually prescribed, but will be accepted because in thorough harmony with all the objects for which Christ shall reign.

Such a thought would impart a prospective interest to the work of reigning with Christ that would be absent if we supposed that the apostles would be mere court puppets, as we might express it. We are justified in believing that there will be nothing mechanical in the operations of immortal life.

The controlling presence of the spirit will not exclude individuality of thought and volition. Rather will there be that diversity in glorious unity. One spirit, acting in the diversity of individual gift and intelligence --in harmony, but not in monotony--will be no new experience.

In the apostolic age, the same phenomenon was exemplified in a lower form (1 Cor. 12:4-11). What would be true of the apostles in their exaltation would be true of all saints, so that we may look forward to a life full of the interest that comes even now from the application of individual judgment to the decision of problems as they arise.

Law of Moses Ch 33

31 And in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that Yahweh thy Elohim bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place.

God has separated us from anti-typical Egypt, and has made us entirely dependent upon Him for food, guidance, and all things. God is, indeed, exceedingly kind toward us, but faith is needed to perceive it. There are many things that appear to militate against this kindness. But God has repeatedly explained and exemplified the apparent anomaly.

As man is now constituted, trouble is absolutely necessary for his well-being. The inspired record of His dealings with Israel in the wilderness emphasises the point. At the close of the forty years wanderings, Moses told the Israelites that during the whole time God had borne them as a man doth bear his son —that they had lacked nothing (2:7).

Note the words, "lacked nothing, " and yet had been suffered to hunger, thirst, and to be deprived of many comforts. For the moment, evil is not incompatible with good. It is for us to learn well the lesson that God (though he afflicts with evil) withholdeth no good thing from them that walk uprightly (Ps. 84:11).

"As a father pitieth his children so Yahweh pitieth them that fear him" - Ps. 103:13.

Bro AT Jannaway

The Christadelphian, Aug 1888