Samuel

The three centuries between Moses and Samuel produced no great prophets, although the prophetic gift was bestowed on a number of individuals. Samuel’s career marked the transition from the full-fledged theocracy, begun when the people voluntarily placed themselves under God’s leadership at Mount Sinai, to a modified form with kings as the visible heads of the government. Thus Samuel was the last of the prophet-leaders who had been frequently known since the days of Moses. His leadership was a period of unification and instruction. Knowing what was coming, God was using Samuel to prepare the way for the establishment of the monarchy, even though that was not His desire for the nation.APAY 153.2

Samuel was one of those in whom the offices of prophet and priest were combined. It was in his boyhood, during his training for the priesthood, that the Lord first gave him a message to be delivered to Eli. Through the years that followed, “Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord.” 1 Samuel 3:19, 20. The people’s respect and high regard for Samuel is apparent all through the record of his ministry. In many ways Samuel occupies a place in the history of Israel second only to that of Moses. It is not without reason that the Lord linked the two as He denounced the sin of Israel to Jeremiah. “Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before Me, yet My mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of My sight, and let them go forth.” Jeremiah 15:1. Often these men had stood before God to plead for the people, and if the intercession of any man could have availed, it would have been theirs. Each was responsible for the deliverance of the nation from the hand of the enemy. Each marked the closing of an old order and the beginning of a new. As it was Moses’ privilege to anoint the first of the high priests, so it was Samuel’s to set apart the first king of Israel, and later the first king from the tribe of Judah, the founder of the line in which Messiah was to be born. When a man of strong character, virtue, and leadership was needed, the Lord took the best man he could find, called him to the prophetic office, taught and directed the nation through him.APAY 153.3

Through the years when the kings reigned, the prophets did not occupy the same positions of authority as they had previously. Their role was that of counselor more than of leader, except as leadership was shown in spiritual activities. For more than four hundred years after the beginning of the monarchy the quality of kings shifted back and forth from good to evil, and prophets were used to co-operate with the worthy rulers, or to rebuke and correct those who were going in sinful ways. Samuel warned Saul that the kingdom had been taken from him and his house; Nathan pointed to the sin in David’s life; Huldah counseled Josiah concerning the roll of the law uncovered in the temple; Elijah denounced Ahab and later destroyed the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel; Isaiah assured Ahaz that Rezin and Pekah would fail in their attack on Judah. These are but samples of what the Lord did for the kings of the united and divided monarchies. Crisis after crisis was foreseen, and, if the word of the prophet had been heeded, these would have been averted. But as the centuries progressed, the word of the Lord through His messengers had less and less effect on the kings and the people as a whole. “Moreover all the chief of the priests, and the people, transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen; and polluted the house of the Lord which He had hallowed in Jerusalem. And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by His messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because He had compassion on His people, and on His dwelling place: but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy. Therefore He brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age: He gave them all into his hand.” 2 Chronicles 36:14-17.APAY 154.1