Christ Triumphant: April—The Wilderness Journey to Canaan: God's Methods of Training Different From Man's, April 2

Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian. Exodus 2:15.

Moses spent forty years as a shepherd of flocks to prepare him to understand himself, and to purify himself by emptying himself so that the Lord could accomplish His will in him. The Lord does not take for His workers mere machines in intellect or feelings. Both are essential to do the work, but these human elements of character must be purged from defects, not by talking of the will of God, but by doing His will. If any will do His will, they shall know of the doctrine. Moses was under training to God. He endured a long process of mental training to fit him to be leader of the armies of Israel.

Inspiration will come to people of God's appointment, but not to those who retain a high idea of their own mental superiority. Every person whom God will use to do His will must have humble ideas of self and must seek, in persevering earnestness, for light. God will not require any person to become a novice and to sink down into a voluntary humility, and become more and more incapacitated. God calls upon everyone with whom He works to do the very highest kind of thinking and praying and hoping and believing.

Many have, as had Moses, very much to unlearn in order to learn the very lessons that they need to learn. Moses had need to be self-trained by severest mental and moral discipline, and God wrought with him before he could be fitted to train others in mind and heart. He had been instructed in the Egyptian courts. Nothing was left as unnecessary to train him to become a general of armies. The false theories of the idolatrous Egyptians had been instilled into his mind, and the influences surrounding him, and the things his eyes looked upon, could not be easily shaken off or corrected.

Thus it is with many who have had a false training in any line. All the idolatrous rubbish of heathen lore must be removed—bit by bit, item by item—from Moses’ mind. Jethro helped him in many things to a correct faith, as far as he himself understood. He was working upward toward the light where he could see God in singleness of heart. God Jehovah was revealed to him. This thorough intellectual training in Egypt, and as a shepherd among the mountains, in the pure air, made him a strong thinker and a strong doer of the Word of God.—Manuscript 45, 1890 (Manuscript Releases 2:324-326).