What God Did for Ancient Israel

Our family scripture reading has taken us through Deuteronomy, Joshua, and now into Judges, over the last several weeks. It is interesting to me that the Lord, both through Moses and Joshua, reminded the Israelites what He had done for them, and the consequences should the Israelites turn away from Him. Some read about the Israelite conquest of ancient Israel and see only the violence. However, in Deuteronomy 4:37-38, the Lord explains why He did it:

 37 And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them, and brought thee out in his sight with his mighty power out of Egypt; 

 38 To drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou art, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance, as it is this day.

In Joshua, Chapters 23 and 24, the Lord again reminds Israel of all He has done for them, and states in Joshua 24:12-13:

12 And I sent the hornet before you, which drave them out from before you, even the two kings of the Amorites; but not with thy sword, nor with thy bow. 

 13 And I have given you a land for which ye did not labour, and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them; of the vineyards and oliveyards which ye planted not do ye eat.

In other words, because of the love the Lord had for the Israelites and the Patriarchs, and the wickedness of the Canaanites, etc., the Lord destroyed the inhabitants of the land of Israel and gave the cities, villages, houses, land and orchards for their use. (It is interesting to observe a similarity between this and the settlement of North America by Europeans--the native population had largely been killed off by plagues before the Europeans made any significant colonization leaving a land open for settlement).

The Exodus was a defining moment for Israel. Before that, Israel was merely another wandering desert tribe ("Hebrew")--in fact, other peoples not descended from Abraham and Jacob accompanied them on the Exodus and, presumably, intermarried and were absorbed. However, it was the Exodus and events therein that truly formed Israel into a separate people. When ancient Israel again began to merge with and become indistinguishable from the surrounding peoples, the Lord allowed the land to be conquered and the people taken away. For Judah, this was the 70 years of captivity in Babylon, that again separated Israel as a unique people.

In this dispensation, we see something similar with the LDS Church. Although the Church, as a religious body, was doctrinally different from the other Christian sects of the day, it was not yet a separate and distinct people. The Saints being driven from Missouri and Illinois changed this. Oswald Spengler, in volume 2 of The Decline of the West, observed:

But "people" is a linkage of which one is conscious. In ordinary usage, one designates as one's "people"--and with feeling--that community, out of the many to which one belongs, which inwardly stands nearest to one.  ...  A people is an aggregate of men which feels itself a unit. The Spartiates felt themselves a people in this sense; the "Dorians" of 1100, too, probably, but those of 400 certainly not. The Crusaders became genuinely a people in taking the oath of Clermont; the Mormons in their expulsion from Missouri, in 1839; the Mamertines by their need of winning for themselves a stronghold of refuge.  ...  So long as the common feeling is there, the people as such is there.

(pp. 159-160). The expulsion and relocation to Utah was the Church's Exodus--the time in Utah, Idaho, etc., our equivalent of 40 years in the desert. The return to Missouri will be our equivalent of ancient Israel's crossing of the Jordan River. It was Brigham Young, I believe, who had indicated that when the Saints returned to Independence that the area would be abandoned, without even a yellow dog to wag its tail. The Saints of that time may also occupy cities which they did not build, and enjoy orchards which they did not plant.