The Mantle of Samuel - Reflections for Today

He was the last of the Judges and one of the greatest law-givers and administrators that God raised up for Israel. He came to the nation at a time of crisis and the nation took him to its heart. He served his people well and faithfully but at the end they rejected him in favour of a king who oppressed and betrayed them. During Samuel's span of power he brought his people back to God and lifted them to the heights of faith, but before he died he saw them in grievous apostasy and once more under the sovereignty of their enemies. In his life he ruled the nation but at the end he was gathered to his fathers in obscurity. Yet he lit a torch that was never put out. He spent his last years teaching a handful of youngsters who continued in the spirit of his life after that life was spent. He passed on the torch and in after years the work of Samuel blossomed and bloomed afresh.

We do well to heed the story of this man's life. We too hold a torch; a torch of truth that it is our duty to hold aloft while we live, and when our failing hands can carry it no longer, to pass it on to younger and eager hands outstretched to receive it. This truth which we hold as a stewardship, is not ours alone; it was passed to us from those of former years, as a heritage to be guarded and amplified and passed on to our successors. The work of God goes on in generation after generation, and nothing that we have is ours selfishly to enjoy and cast to the ground when the time comes that we can possess it no longer.

There is a strong parallel in our own time to the early days of Samuel. Once again the lamp has burned low in the Temple of God, and Eli has gone to sleep. Once again the people are sorely in need of instruction and guidance. Once again the word of the Lord has come to some who have been ready to give up all worldly interests and aims in order to serve God in His Temple and await His word. Once again such have gone forth into the world with the message of salvation and have done a work such as the world had not seen for many generations.

Temporarily, it may be, but none the less definitely, the enemies of righteousness have been checked and the truth made known to the people. But Samuel in his turn has become old and the glories of past days are slipping away. Who is to take the torch ? Upon whom is the mantle of Samuel to descend, and continue the proclamation of this glorious truth in the world of men? For there is still a message to proclaim. Those who are disappointed or perplexed, because the establishment of the Kingdom has not come at so early a date as they may have expected must not lose faith. The Plan of God is still being wrought out on time. The fact that we are not able correctly to discern the time makes no difference to that. And in times of uncertainty we do well to study the lives of those ancient stalwarts who, with so limited knowledge, must have found the purposes of God an even greater enigma than we do, and yet triumphed in faith and completed their course with joy.

Samuel was a leader and a prophet, a man of action and vision, utterly and completely consecrated and surrendered to the service of God. That was the secret of his success and that is the secret we have to know if we also would remain steadfast to the end. He went about his work with the serene confidence of a man who habitually walked with God and knew without a shadow of doubt that the work he was doing was God's work. In that confidence was the driving force behind the work he did.

There are many examples in the Old Testament of such men who gained "a good report through faith ". Daniel, Isaiah, Nehemiah, John the Baptist, were all men of action, vigorous, positive action, but they were all visionaries. While their hands were set to the plough their eyes were fixed on the heavens and there they saw visions of God. It is noteworthy that so many of these men pledged their lives to God in their early youth and were almost immediately called to serve Him. That should be a pointer to us, not to despise the aspirations of our younger brethren to serve their Lord effectively but rather to realise the immense potentialities in a young life fully surrendered at so early a stage, and to do all in our power to assist it. There is more than a passing fitness in our Lord's reference to new wine and old wineskins in this connection. It is quite possible that some among the younger generation can receive and assimilate some elements of unfolding Truth peculiar to this generation which most of the older ones could never accept and are not expected by our understanding, all-wise Lord to accept. In such a case it is clearly the duty of the older ones to view with tolerant understanding the endeavours of those who must perforce tread a somewhat different path because they live in a somewhat different world.

The life of Samuel was a hard life; his victories were not easily won. That he was able at the end to turn his back upon all that his prowess had won him and live contentedly teaching his handful of students in a quiet country retreat says much for his strength of character. But then, Samuel knew something of the end from the beginning. He knew that all his mighty works, wrought in the heyday of his physical maturity, must be as nothing compared to the spiritual legacy he must leave behind him if he was to be truly faithful. With nearly all of Israel apostate from the faith and most of his life's work already in ruins he knew full well that in the hearts and minds of those few " sons of the prophets " reposed the real hope of the future. So he taught them in the same serenity of mind in which he had once led Israel against the Philistine hosts, and conquered, without any weapons save his faith, and his people's faith in God.

The story of Israel's varied fortunes in their many wars with the Philistines in Samuel's day is an object lesson in itself. It was when Samuel was quite young and still attendant on the High Priest Eli that the great disaster came. Israel lost her greatest glory, the Ark of the Covenant. The word of Samuel had already begun to go out to Israel, but quite evidently as yet there was no real heed being given. When the fortunes of war began to go against Israel they gave way to superstitious beliefs and took the Ark into battle with them in the hope that God would not suffer the indignity of losing the symbol of His presence into the hands of the unbelievers. But God did. Can there be a more telling example of the utter disregard the Most High has for form and ceremony? If Israel no longer had faith in Him, the sacred Ark was no longer a symbol of any value, and its capture by the Philistines was a matter of indifference to Him. So the first Philistine war ended in disaster for Israel, the death of Eli, last High Priest of the line of Ithamar and twenty years of utter hopelessness and dejection on the part of the Lord's people.

It was during that twenty years that Samuel came into his own. With the death of Eli he stepped into the place of authority, and although he could not be invested with the dignity of High Priest, he was in practice both sacred and secular ruler of the people.

One wonders why the Ark of the Covenant was not restored to its place after its recovery from the Philistines. According to 1 Sam. 6 and 7 it was in the Philistines' land only seven months but after its recovery it remained in the house of Abinadab of Kirjath-jearim until the reign of King David. It is probable that the Philistines destroyed Shiloh, where the Tabernacle stood in the days of Eli, after the capture of the Ark, and with there being no officiating High Priest and Israel as often as not under the heel of alien powers, it seems that the Tabernacle service, together with the Day of Atonement sacrifices, fell into disuse for a considerable number of years. That was the price the people paid for their presumption in taking the Ark of God into battle before them as though in itself it had power to deliver.

The "twenty years" of 1 Sam.7.2 cannot be the time the Ark was at Kirjath-jearim for that period would not extend to David's reign. It seems more reasonable that it indicates the period during which the people languished under Divine disfavour. Gradually, under Samuel's leadership, they awakened to a sense of their apostasy and undone condition. So at the end they returned to the Lord and 1 Sam.7 is the account of their return.

That provoked the second Philistine war. The change in the hearts of the children of Israel was remarkable. The same enemy; the same invasion, the same threat, but this time there was no suggestion of taking the Ark before them into battle. They had learned their lesson. This time they said to Samuel (v.8) "Cease not to cry unto the Lord our God for us, that He will save us out of the hand of the Philistines". And, of course, God heard. The Philistines were routed without Israel having to lift a finger in their own defence. Samuel offered a burnt offering, and cried unto the Lord, and the Lord heard him. That was all. It was on this occasion that Samuel set a great stone and called it 'Eben-ezer', signifying "Hitherto hath the Lord helped us ", and gave us thereby a word and a theme that we have used constantly for each other's comfort and encouragement in these later years.

Samuel was now an old man. The time had come for his mantle to fall on other shoulders. The people loved and respected Samuel, but they wanted a king. "They have not rejected you" said the Most High to His faithful servant "but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them." So Samuel anointed the young man Saul, and saw his own authority pass to the man of Israel's choice. He saw the man prove unworthy of the anointing and heard the Divine sentence of rejection. Therefore in the fullness of time he anointed another young man, one after God's own heart, the youth David. He was not destined to see David as king. Samuel finished his days at length with his own life-work completed but God's work in the nation still unfinished. But he passed on his mantle to those young hearts who surrounded his death-bed.

Perhaps that is one great lesson we all have to learn. Though we live a hundred years twice told, we can do no more than finish our own life's work. The work of God in the world will still remain unfinished and will still be going on. We may, each of us, make our individual contribution toward that work and the contribution we have made, be it great or small, will have made some difference to God's great work. We shall have been co-workers together with Him. But after our own little time of activity is ended, there will be others to continue the work and play their part too in the accomplishment of the Divine Plan. God grant that we individually may be faithful to our calling and before our own end comes, pass the flaming torch to one younger and newer in the race who is waiting to pick it up and follow in the path which we have trod.