Choose The Lord

In Joshua chapter 10 the Lord fights for Israel’s cause. In verses 12-14 it suggests that the sun stood still. If we read in the Book of Mormon we can come to the conclusion that it was not the sun that stood, but it was indeed the earth. In the Old Testament student manual it says, “So here we have the words of a Book of Mormon prophet confirming the fact that God can—and would, when necessary—cause that the earth should stop in its rotation to lengthen a day. And since on the occasion in question he was fighting to bring victory to Israel, this was one of his means of doing so.” I would explain this phenomenon to someone who wouldn’t believe the Bible as stating that we don’t understand all the workings of the Lord. The Lord is so far above us in knowledge and power that we, as mere humans, cannot comprehend all that the Lord does. In these particular verses we realize that Joshua was a prophet and not a scientist, so it is a human error. And people in those days did not have the knowledge that we have now and it would be quite hard to explain this phenomenon to someone who didn’t have any knowledge of the ways of science.

Israel’s Successes

Defeats Ai

Defeats Amorites and allies

Divers kinds and cities destroyed

Two kings on east of Jordan & 31 on West conquered

Israel’s Failures

Defeated by people of Ai

I think that the major theme of Joshua was that we should be choosing now whom we are going to serve. There are two great forces that are present here on the earth and they are both vying for our allegiance. It is our duty and responsibility to choose now who we are going to be and which side we are going to follow. Jeffrey R. Holland said, “The future of this world has long been declared; the final outcome between good and evil is already known. There is absolutely no question as to who winds because the victory has already been posted on the scoreboard. The only really strange thing in all of this is that we are still down here on the field trying to decide which team’s jersey we want to wear!” How true this quote is. We all know that the outcome with be in the favor of the Lord, but sometimes we seem to forget that and start to side with Satan. We need to choose this day whom we are going to serve and stick with it.