Beginning of the End - Ellen G. White

Chapter 36
Forty Years of Wandering in the Wilderness
For nearly forty years the people of Israel were lost to view in
the vast, out-of-the-way desert. In the rebellion at Kadesh they had
rejected God, and for the time God had rejected them. Since they
had been unfaithful to His covenant, they were not to receive the
sign of the covenant, the rite of circumcision. Their desire to return
to the land of slavery had proved they were unworthy of freedom,
and the Passover, instituted to remember and celebrate their
deliverance from slavery, was not to be observed.
But the tabernacle service continued, showing that God had not
completely left His people. And His divine care still supplied their
wants. "The Lord your God ... knows your trudging through this
great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with
you; you have lacked nothing" (Deuteronomy 2:7). God cared for
Israel even during these years of banishment: "You also gave Your
good Spirit to instruct them. ... In the wilderness ... their clothes did
not wear out and their feet did not swell" (Nehemiah 9:20, 21).
The wilderness was to provide discipline for the rising
generation as they prepared to enter the Promised Land. Moses
declared, "As a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens
you," "to humble you, and test you, to know what was in your heart,
whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He ...
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