Beginning of the End - Ellen G. White

Aaron were not to enjoy. A solemn sadness rested on their faces as
they remembered what had kept them from entering the land
promised to their fathers.
Aaron's work for Israel was done. Forty years before, at the age
of eighty-three, God had called him to unite with Moses in his
challenging mission. He had held up the great leader's hands when
the Hebrew army was battling the Amalekites. He had been
privileged to climb Mount Sinai, to see God's glory. The Lord had
honored him with the sacred consecration of high priest and had
sustained him in that holy position by terrible displays of judgment
in the destruction of Korah and his followers. When his two sons
were killed for ignoring God's specific command, he did not rebel or
even complain.
Yet the record of his noble life had been marred when he
yielded to the demanding of the people and made the golden calf at
Sinai, and again when he united with Miriam in criticizing Moses.
And he, with Moses, offended the Lord at Kadesh by disobeying the
command to speak to the rock so that it would give water.
Aaron carried the names of Israel on his high priest's
breastplate. He communicated the will of God to the people. He
entered the most holy place on the Day of Atonement, "not without
blood," as a mediator for all Israel. The exalted nature of that sacred
office as representative of our great High Priest made Aaron's sin at
Kadesh very great.
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