SINAI AND THE SABBATH
These words rang out over the desert wastes of Sinai. Mt Sinai stood above the camp of the Children of Israel. It was covered with black clouds and thunderings, and from it flashed lightnings. The whole mountain quaked and was smoking with the smoke of a furnace. The fury of the tempest of the Lord swept through the area and the whole mountain seemed on fire. Above the terror and the glory there came the sound of a trumpet, exceeding loud, that waxed louder and louder, with the voice of words, I am the Lord thy God that brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.’
It was three months since they had left Egypt. The fiery cloudy pillar had stayed with them. In the day it gave shelter from the desert heat, at night the comfort of warmth and light. While they slept the manna, the food of angels, fell softly on the ground around them. The Lord had brought them out of Egypt to bring them unto Himself. He had loved the patriarchs who had walked with Him. He had loved Abraham, who had learned, despite some serious mistakes, to trust and obey God. God had called him His Friend. Abraham had a boy called Isaac who had also loved Him and Isaac had a son called Jacob. Jacob, who was later called Israel, had a large family of boys. It was their descendants who were the slaves in Egypt that God delivered and brought into the wilderness on their way to the land which had been promised them 400 years previously. In Egypt they had seen the sun gods and Apis the bull. They had seen and known the idols of wood and stone and metal that were worshipped and served at the rising of the sun, followed by feasting and sexual orgy. But now the true and living God had come
to them in glory with thousands of the angels in their brightness and power.
What they experienced was in harmony with all the other times in the Bible when God came to talk to human beings, as He did with Moses, or in vision to Isaiah or Ezekiel or Daniel.
Moses had previously met with God at the burning bush. God’s presence is always marked with fire, smoke, tempestuous wind, clouds, voices, thunderings and lightnings, thousands of angels,