One night recently while lying awake and engaged in mental prayer in the quietness of midnight, I got to meditating on Jesus and Moses, and the similarity in their lives, and yearning that I might be sunk down into the fathomless meekness and gentleness of spirit which was in those blessed characters. In a few moments the Holy Ghost opened to my mind as in a vista or panorama the most remarkable parallel in the lives of Jesus and Moses; and the word’s quoted by Stephen in his burning speech, recorded in the 7th of Acts, that Jesus was to be a prophet like unto Moses, was unfolded with startling beauty and an immensity of significance and a minuteness of detail which fairly bewildered me. The following items of comparison in their lives and ministry was forcibly shown to me one by one. I have never seen in print or heard from any one these points of similarity before, and I give them to you just as the Spirit gave them to me.

1. In their infancy, they were both under the ban of death. Moses was born at a time when there was a cruel edict to kill the Hebrew male children. And soon after the birth of Jesus Herod issued an order for the slaughter of the male infants of Bethlehem. So they both began life under the awful shadow of assassination.

2. They were both admired in their infancy by royalty. The wise men who came to hunt for the infant Jesus were very probably pious old kings from the far east.

This is the tradition of the Church and the early fathers, and the word “wise” should be “great men,” or more literally “majestic men.” And when Moses was looked upon by Pharaoh’s daughter she instantly loved him.

One version tells us that the infant Moses was “very fair,” but the Greek says when he was born “he was beautiful to God,” and God made the royal daughter to be smitten with his infant charms. So the singular thing occurs that while both infants were under a royal edict of murder, both of them were loved and admired by royalty.

3. Both of their infant lives were protected by the kingdom of Egypt. Little Moses, in spite of the death warrant against him, found a sheltering place under the very crown that had ordered him to be killed, and God providentially arranged for the infant Jesus to be protected by the same government from the rage of Herod. How this subtle and wide sweeping network of God’s providences should impress us with his omniscient care.

4. They were both trained by their mothers for great and special work. How perfect was the wisdom of God in arranging for Moses’s mother to be his nurse and teacher. She must have been an extraordinary woman, deeply taught of God, and she diligently poured all the traits of her character into her child. And while we have no sympathy with Romish Mariolatry, yet I have no doubt but the mother of Jesus stands at the head of all the women of humanity, and on the other side the boy Jesus received the most perfect maternal training of any one who has lived. God mysteriously blends the material and the supernatural, the human and the divine, in all these matters of special training for special service.

5. In both Moses and Jesus there was a divine passion, an all-consuming enthusiasm to deliver and save the Hebrew race.

It is evident that Moses manifested from his youth an ardent interest in his people, and as soon as he could he began to exert himself in their defense. And the boy Jesus had such an overflowing zeal for the spiritual deliverance of his people that it broke loose like a cataract at twelve years of age.

6. They were both rejected by their people for whom they had such love and zeal. This is the one strong point of comparison which Stephen cites in his address. Jesus was crucified and buried by the Jews under sanction of Roman law. And so Moses was virtually crucified in being rejected by his people, when at forty years of age he offered to be their deliverer.

And just as in killing Jesus, they used the political power to kill him, so the Hebrews, in rejecting Moses, threatened to use against him the very political power under which they were oppressed. In both cases the Jews were living under the oppression of a foreign power which they used against their leaders.

7. In both cases, after being rejected and crucified, they left their people and went up to God. Moses went to Mt. Horeb, which is distinctively called “the mountain of God,” and lived a life hid with God, a life of quietness and rest and great intercession of prayer for his people. And so Jesus went up to the right hand of the Father, where he is interceding for his people, still pleading for the very race that crucified him, and quietly resting in the divine sunlight of the heavenly Mt. Horeb until the very people that rejected him shall be humble enough to be his footstool.

8. When Moses returned to his people in Egypt he did not go in weakness or humiliation, but with the tread of a universal monarch and with the rod of miraculous and manifold power, and clothed with the authority of Almighty God to scourge the Egyptians and to overwhelmingly convince his own people. In exactly the same way when the Gentile age is up, typified by the forty years’ absence of Moses, Jesus will descend from the mountain of God, not in humiliation and grief, but with absolute and overwhelming authority to scourge all the sinners in the world, to let loose the ten plagues of the great tribulations, and to prove himself the Almighty God to his own people, both of the Jews and Gentiles. The rod that Moses used in scourging Egypt is a perfect type of the “rod of iron” which is so often spoken of in connection with the second coming of Jesus. Revelation 2:27.

9. When Moses returned to Egypt it was to gather out the elect of the Lord and take them up into God’s country, and at the same time severely punish the wicked Egyptians. The divine sword which he handled had a salvation edge for the people of God and a damnation edge for the sinners.

This was exactly the prophecy concerning Jesus at his second coming with a two-edged sword. Revelation 1:16. He will gather out the elect who are converted, sanctified and filled with the Holy Spirit, and raise from the dead those who in their life time were qualified to be among the hundred and forty-four thousand and gather them up into the mountain of the air, and when he thus gathers out his elect who have his own likeness in them, all the nations of the earth will be left with unutterable trouble and anguish in every single family, like the Egyptians, who were mourning over their dead in every house, while the happy Jews were rejoicing under the pillar of fire.

10. There is a remarkable incident recorded, where Moses and his officers and the seventy elders of Israel, which were representative of their whole body, went up into the mount of God and saw an open vision of the God of Israel, with his feet resting upon a glittering sapphire pavement, and in that marvelous interview with Jehovah, they partook of a feast—ate and drank in God’s presence. Exodus 24:9–11.

This is a clear, prophetic type, that when Jesus gathers out his saints from this Egypt-like earth into the mountains of the air, there will then take place the beatific vision of God and the banquet of the marriage of the Lamb, which is so abundantly spoken of by Christ in his parables, and so definitely described in the Songs of Solomon, and the 19th of Revelation. So in this respect there is a perfect likeness between Moses and Jesus. While the elders returned back to the camp, Moses remained shut in with God forty days and forty nights, and it is likely that the marriage supper will last forty years.

While Moses was thus in the glory of God the land of Egypt was writhing in anguish under God’s judgments; the effects of their sin. In like manner, while Jesus and his elect are at their banquet, the nations of the earth will be passing through the great tribulations. The student will please study the two suppers in Revelation 19, one in glory with the Lamb and the other a supper of fowls, i.e., devils feasting on the slaughter of war among the nations of the earth; and both taking place at the same time.

Thus Moses being wrapped in glory, while Egypt was wrapped in woe, will be repeated in that prophet who is like unto Moses, and with the impenitent nations like unto Egypt.

11. Moses formed the Hebrew people into a most beautiful, organized and portable city, with three tribes on the north, three on the east, three on the south and three on the west, and in the large hollow square he constructed the matchless tabernacle in which God lived, and from that divine center, outward along the avenues to the outskirts of the camp, every detail was arranged with wondrous symmetry and beauty; every tribe and family and man being arranged in his appropriate place. This same thing will be repeated when the Lord Jesus gathers unto himself those who are qualified to be among the hundred and forty and four thousand, and in the mountain of the air, he will arrange in everlasting order and beauty the sanctified millions that will compose the New Jerusalem, giving to each one his proper locality in the organic army, and the standing that each one will have in that the living structure.

12. Moses, having organized his portable living city, began moving right to Canaan, with a view of taking absolute possession of its territory, exterminating its incorrigible sinners, spreading the twelve out over that fair land; and through them God designed to evangelize, subdue and govern every nation on earth. You will find this conception amply confirmed by the marvelous promises in Deuteronomy, that if the Hebrews obeyed God, his plan was to make them “the head of all nations and not the tail,” and they should be a kingdom of princes and priests over all nations.

We all know their great failure, but the Lord Jesus will not fail; and after organizing the bridehood of the Lamb into that immortal army and living city, so often spoken of in Scripture, he will descend from the mountains of God to that same Palestine and stand with his elect on Mt. Zion and take absolute control of this world, and the members of his glorified bridehood will be scattered through all the earth to institute his millennial reign, and to superintend with inflexible authority the minutest welfare of all mankind.

O, the vastness and beauty of God’s design! I cannot intimate in cold print the splendor of this analogy, as the Spirit opened it up to my mind, but I have a cloudless conviction that all will be fulfilled. If seven of these points have already proved correct, so the other five will be.