If we turn to the history of peoples and nations in order to learn the lessons which their experiences teach, we shall find that the hand- dealings of God with them as collected bodies, as well as the experiences of individuals, demonstrate the same great facts of God's long-suffering and abundant mercy, and of his willingness to pardon on the first manifestation of sincere repentance.
It was not until the antediluvians had become thoroughly corrupt, not until every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was evil continually,[A] and they rejected the teachings of Noah, and were beyond the hope of reformation, that the Lord sent the flood upon them and cut them off that they might not perpetuate in their posterity their corruption.
[Footnote A: Gen. vi.]
Next in chronological order to the antediluvians stands the people of Jared; and from the brief history we have of them in the Book of Mormon, consisting of an abridgement of the twenty-four plates of the prophet Ether, we learn that they were frequently in rebellion against God, and continually straying from his precepts and ordinances. Yet as often as they repented he forgave them; and not only that, but supplemented that forgiveness by such periods of prosperity, that one would think that even if they knew no more than the dumb ass that merely knows his master's crib, they must have been aware that it was to their present as well as to their eternal interests to live in obedience to the will of heaven. Yet sin, individual and national, was added to sin, transgressions followed close upon the heels of each other, and secret combinations were formed for robbery and to obtain political power, spreading rapine, murder and terror throughout the land, and menacing always the security of the political fabric.
In the midst of all this the Lord labored patiently for their reformation, sending his servants, the prophets, to them, to teach them the way of life and encourage them to observe the statutes and judgments of the Lord. When persuasion failed, then warning was given of calamities and judgments, followed by the chastening hand of God; but all to no purpose; reform they would not. They killed the prophets, and persecuted those who attempted to follow their counsels until they filled up the cup of their iniquity, and the Spirit of the Lord entirely withdrew from them, and then began that series of wars in the sixth century B. C., which finally ended in the extermination of the entire people.[B]
The history of ancient Israel, as recorded in the Bible, is very similar to this. The Lord took them from the bondage of Egypt, to sanctify them a people unto himself. He gave them Moses and Aaron and other wise, faithful men to be their teachers, and led them from the dominion of Egypt towards a choice land, their journey being attended by such displays of God's glory and power as are seldom witnessed by the inhabitants of the earth. The Gospel of the Son of God was first presented to them, but when they would not abide its requirements, the law of Moses, a less excellent law, was given to be their school-master to bring them to Christ.[C] And when they complained against the free constitution that had been given them, and would no longer sustain the judges whom the Lord raised up to be their leaders, he gave them a kingdom according to their desires,[D] but warned them of the bondage to which it was liable to lead.
[Footnote B: See the Book of Ether, Book of Mormon, for their history.]
[Footnote C: Gal. iii; Heb. iv.]
[Footnote D: I. Sam. viii.]
The consequences of obedience to the laws which the Lord gave them through Moses, even before the death of that great leader, were plainly set before them; and surely the advantages that are there set forth, leave nothings to be desired, no matter how ambitious of place, power, honor, wealth, glory and dominion a nation might be. And, on the other hand, in case of their forsaking their God and his laws, the judgments, calamities, distress, wars, famines, pestilences, dishonor and destruction that follow, as a consequence of their apostasy from God, are drawn with such vividness, even down to the minutest detail, that had these things been written after they came to pass—after the threatened judgments were visited upon Israel, and especially upon Judah—in a word, if they had been written as history instead of prophecy— they could scarcely be more circumstantial than the prophetic words of Moses.[E]