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the side of that in which the "man of God" rested. This was to be a dying testimony to
"the man of God" that his embassy of God had been real, and that surely the "thing
would be" (that it would happen) "which he had cried in the word of Jehovah against
the altar which (was)at Bethel, and against all the Bamoth-houses which (are)^223 in the
cities of Samaria."
With this profession of faith in the truth of Jehovah's message, and in the power of the
LORD certainly to bring it to pass at some future time, would the old prophet
henceforth live. With it would he die and be buried - laying his bones close to those of
the "man of God," sharing his grave, and nestling, as it were, for shelter in the shadow
of that great Reality which "the man of God" had cast over Bethel. So would he, in life
and death, speak of, and cling to Jehovah - as the True and the Living God.
More than three hundred years later, and nearly a century had passed since the children
of Israel had been carried away from their homes. Then it was that what, centuries
before, the "man of God" had foretold, became literally true (2 Kings 23:15-18). The
idol-temple, in which Jeroboam had stood in his power and glory on that opening day,
was burned by Josiah; the Bamoth were cast down; and on that altar, to defile it, they
gathered from the neighboring sepulchers the bones of its former worshippers, and
burned them there. Yet in their terrible search of vengeance one monument arrested
their attention. They asked of them at Bethel. It marked the spot where the bones of
"the man of God" and of his host the "old prophet" of Samaria^224 lay.
And they reverently left the bones in their resting-places, side by side - as in life, death,
and burial, so still and for aye witnesses to Jehovah; and safe in their witness-bearing.
But three centuries and more between the prediction and the final fulfillment: and in
that time symbolic rending of the altar, changes, wars, final ruin, and desolation! And
still the word seemed to slumber all those centuries of silence, before it was literally
fulfilled. There is something absolutely overawing in this absence of all haste on the
part of God, in this certainty of the final event, with apparent utter unconcern of what
may happen during the long centuries that intervene, which makes us tremble as we
realize how much of buried seed of warning or of promise may sleep in the ground,
and how unexpectedly, but how certainly, it will ripen as in one day into a harvest of
judgment or of mercy.
But too many questions and lessons are involved in this history to pass it without
further study. Who was this "old prophet?" Was he a true prophet of Jehovah? And
why did he thus "lie" to the destruction of the "man of God?" Again, why was such
severe punishment meted out to the "man of God?" Did he deserve any for what might
have been only an error of judgment? And why did his tempter and seducer apparently
escape all punishment? To begin with the old "prophet" of Bethel - we do not regard
(^)