JOSHUA 4: SELECTIVE AMNESIA
When our son passed away, the Creator God gave us a number of supernatural coincidences that I knew we’d forget in time, if they weren’t written down. It took less than 2 weeks for the manuscript of my first book “Breadcrumbs in the Storm” to be written. Memorials are important. We tend to forget things we ought to remember and some of this, through a sort of selective amnesia. Our daily choices choose for us to forget. Likewise, if we didn’t have the focal point of a War memorial in our local park, I would never think to strike up a conversation about the wars with my children. Only by doing this, will the next generation have the capacity for understanding the full impact of what those stories mean.
Our family ties led me to Australia on ANZAC Day one year. A niece and two nephews had been in the Navy along with their father, and my sister had travelled to their home town to watch them march in an ANZAC parade. I could feel her pride as she showed me her photos. My brother had also set up a table of memorabilia at his house that year. The irreplaceable things received down from our grandfather, who served in WWI, seemed a nice way to bring out the stories, old letters, medals, and pictures, on that memorial weekend. One letter, written from our great-grandmother to our dad, was 71 years old!
And so it was that the Creator God memorialized many important things in HIStory – often through feasts and ceremonies. In today’s 
chapter, He used stones taken quite incredibly from the bottom of the flooded fast-flowing Jordan River in modern-day Israel. If those stone aren’t still there today (and 3+ millenniums later it’s highly unlikely), the 12-stone monument on the riverbed of the Jordan will prove to anyone who is willing to go diving. This event took place and it’s not fairytales because, “…they are there to this day.” [v9] Now if you are wondering how I could be so confident as to publicly stake my faith on a scan of the murky waters on the floor of the Jordan River, and it turning up a clearly unnatural rock formation under 3+ millenniums of mud; and that this formation comprised of 12 stones almost certainly in a cube shape, I shall give you a modern-day reason why…
On the ANZAC memorial table in my brother’s house, I saw a 110-year-old postcard to a fellow soldier that was written by our grandfather long before he was married to our grandmother. It made me realize yet again, that the 1958 discovery of The Dead Sea Scrolls (with the oldest manuscripts, of which we have thousands of portions, dating back as early at 130AD), could quite easily be received first-hand, intact, and in good condition, from grandfather to grandson. Father God is in the business of memorializing HIStory for us in clay jars that seemed to “miraculously” preserve these fragile parchments in salt covered Dead Sea caves. When even in the face of termites, ants, salt damage, mould from annual rainfall, oxygen aging, or anything at all, and this for almost 2 millenniums, then I can reasonably believe Him for today’s chapter.
The straight-forward recording with exact details, distances, and geographical locations, sandwiched in quite a ridiculous story of water in “heaps” then 
set in flood time, tells me that it is believable! No-one setting out to delude their readers would write such obviously unbelievable things. Yet as I notice the idea of memorial stones and why these are important, I see with grief now that there is no substitute for parents handing down important information to their kids, and indeed keeping it important in their own minds. [v6-7] Most of my tears now spring from my offspring being so far off on their moral compass that I wonder what I did wrong! What we sow is what we reap[a]; and for some reason, its 100 times easier to slide backwards than it is to progress onward, forward, and upward.
If 40,000 men were part of the ‘extras’ (those of fighting age 20-40yr who were from the tribes left on the east side of the Jordan – v13), then the majority of the nation of Israel who crossed over that day could certainly have been upward of 1.5 million. This is an incredibly significant day in HIStory. Through it, Yehoshua (Joshua) was magnified/revered in the sight of all God’s people, in the same way that Moses was feared before him. [v14] I point out such words from the Orthodox Jewish Bible because there is an incorrect understanding floating about (especially within 2 of the 3 world religions who worship that Creator God) that “reverence” and “fear” belong only to God. At times, and in His building story, the Creator God is using what clever people now call “types” of a Saviour to come. When all the attributes of the “types” are added together, you will get One Person in HIStory who fulfilled the profile of all of them, and Yehoshua (God is Deliverance) in today’s chapter, who is both Leader of God’s People (specifically mandated to bring God’s people into their final resting place) and head of the Tribe set to become “a multitude of nations”[b], is the greatest gemstone yet uncovered for you. This should be pocketed away for future reference as you follow these Breadcrumbs throughout this year.
The Ark of the Covenant [v9] is a very special gold-covered box that Moses had built under the instruction of a Person that He called Malach Hashem[c] (literally translated “Messenger The Name” or “Messenger The LORD”; or, concisely and since both are capitalized 
therefore one name, “Messenger God”). The Ark has inside it three things: Moses’ staff that had budded[d], a container of manna[e] (miracle ‘bread’ that appeared in the desert dew every day for 40 years but then suddenly stopped on the day after they ate their first produce in their new country), and the famous 10 Commandments on stone tablets.[f] The Ark disappeared at the moment when Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon sacked Jerusalem and killed the priests.[g] The fact that Zephaniah was both Second Priest at the time and a prophet, tells me that they almost certainly hid the Ark in the siege since they had plenty of warning – even as far back as Jeremiah the prophet. If, however, you hear that they found the Ark of the Covenant, be on your guard over fact and fiction, real or replica. If it isn’t hidden somewhere under Jerusalem, then it’s almost certainly already in Heaven.[h]
The point that has always only ever been the point, is not the details that we look at while scratching around on the ground like chickens in a farmyard. It’s the bits we choose to forget, like a sort of selective amnesia, and this simply for convenience, because it’s of no interest, or to justify our actions. Instead, our Maker and Father God wants us to soar like eagles and see things from above where He is seated – from HIStory, and from His perspective. We’re created in His image to operate like Him. Our focus and what is not to be forgotten, falls within the final sentence in today’s chapter. It’s the core element that remains true today, the purpose of this epic drama, whether we believe it or not…
“…so that Kol Ammei HaAretz (all, each, every, the entire, the whole of, peoples/nations of the earth) might know the Yad Hashem (The Hand [of] The Name – The LORD), that it is chazakah (strong, mighty – the default assumption until evidence to the contrary); so that you might fear Hashem Eloheichem (The Name – The LORD your God) kol hayamim (all the days, forever).” [v24]
CLICK to return to today’s “Daily Breadcrumbs”
[a] Galatians 6:7
[b] Genesis 48:19
[c] Exodus 3:2
[d] Exodus c4 and Numbers 17:8
[e] Exodus c16
[f] Exodus 24:12
[g] 2 Kings 25:10-21 and 2 Chronicles 36:15-21
[h] Revelation 11:19