March 22 2016
The first question that comes to my mind when I read this is: Why would the Lord allow these serpents to actually kill many of his people? If the point of this experience was to humble His people and provide a means for them to be healed through the Atonement of Christ, wouldn't they all have just been wounded? I think the right question to ask here is this: Is it sometimes an act of mercy, when the Lord takes the life of his people? (Think of the great flood of Noah's day). I think we should remember that God is merciful. God loves his children. His work and his glory is to "bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."(Moses 1:39) So maybe he allows of some of his children to die sometimes based on factors of timing, and their personal state of righteousness. Perhaps the Children of Israel that died, were in a good place spiritually aside from having just fallen into a trap of sinful complaining. Maybe the mercy in allowing some to depart mortal life was to protect them from further sinning that would lead them to a hardness of heart from which they would almost certainly never be rescued. The scriptures talk about people getting to a point where they are "past feeling"(1 Ne 17:45). Sometimes to those who are hardened to a point of "past feeling" the Lord speaks with a "voice of thunder" like it says in that same verse I cited.
The fascinating part of this story for me has to deal with those people that didn't die from the snake bites, but that were severely wounded. The Lord prepared an antidote for the very wounds caused by the snakes that He sent. Why would the lord put His children in a situation where they were exposed to pain and death, only to provide a healing agent for that same affliction? (Think Adam and Eve). The answer to this question embodies the 'why' of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
When the Son of God performed the "infinite and eternal" sacrifice (Alma 34:14) He provided not only a bridge over the chasms of sin and death, which otherwise would forever block man from returning to God's presence, but also a way for man to have his heart purified (Mosiah 4:2). The restored Gospel of Jesus Christ in the latter-days, has helped us understand more fully that God wants more from us than just a one-time verbal acceptance of His gift. We are here to
"apply the atoning blood of Christ" that we might be purified or changed. It is this transformation from a fallen nature to a nature like that of God's that will allow us to one day return to God and "see Him as He is, for we shall be like Him." (Moroni 7:48)
For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. Mosiah 3:19
To go back to the story of the snakes... This story is obviously symbolic of the experience that all of us can have with the Atonement of Christ. As result of our own disobedience, or maybe the poor choices of others (were all that got bitten part of the group that was complaining in the wilderness?) we are wounded. Instead of just prevent the wound from happening, the Lord instead prompts us to look to the serpent of the staff which is a symbol for Christ to be healed because it is through that "application" of the power of the atonement that we experience a gradual change in our nature. Our eventual exaltation comes not just from a reversal of our wounds but through the actual process of the healing. I like to think of it like we are drinking from the cup of Christ's mercy, and after drinking from this cup over a lifetime of repentance and "applying the blood of Christ" we will have absorbed his very attributes and his likeness. This is what Christ wants for us.
I am grateful for the snake bites in my life, because they have forced me to my knees and given me a heightened awareness of my need for the serpent on the staff. I am disappointed that many times I have been guilty as were some of the Israelites that wouldn't look and live "because of the simpleness of the way" (1 Ne 17:41).
I believe that it is God's plan for there to always be serpents in our life that drive us to need the regular application of the healing AND transforming balm of Jesus. Hopefully the serpents that exist as a result of our personal sins, will shrink in size over time as we progress. I imagine that those serpents in the lives of men like the apostles are probably the size of a mosquito, but they still cause them to need to repent and drink from the merciful cup.
