Numbers 23:1-12

For Reading and Meditation:     2 Timothy 4:1-8

There can be no doubt that the Bible presents the death of the ungodly as being terrible. How differently, however, does it portray the death of the righteous. Even a hireling prophet like Balaam, bad as he was, recognised that there was something different about the death of the godly. Listen to his words in

"Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be redeemed among the nations." Numbers 23:9

Who would wish to dwell among the nations and to be numbered with them? Why, even the professing church is such that to follow the LORD fully within its bounds is very difficult. There is such a mingling and mixing that one often sighs for "a lodge in some vast wilderness."

Certain it is that the LORD would have His people follow a...