In Exodus 6 the Lord publishes His Name. It is a Name suited to the then condition of Israel. They were groaning in Egypt. Task-masters and brick-kilns were oppressing them. The Lord lets them learn Him in characters of faithfulness, grace, and strength, exactly suited to such a condition. He tells them that He remembered them, heard their sorrows, had His undertakings to their fathers before His thoughts, and was about to rise up for their deliverance. They were oppressed, and He was a Redeemer--that was all--that was the Name He was publishing, because that was the Name they needed--that was the character which their circumstances needed to find in Him.
In Exodus 34 He publishes His Name again. But it is a very different Name, a Name that has respect, not to strong enemies, but to disobedient, rebellious people - a Name, therefore, full of pardoning grace, and not of delivering strength. For this was the new Name which the then present condition of Israel needed. The people had now troubled themselves, and it was forgiveness they wanted; before, Egypt troubled them, and it was strength and deliverance they needed.
Connected with forgiveness, they learn that God will correct or discipline them even to the third or fourth generation.
How wondrous these two publications of His Name are! How fine a witness they bear to us that if we will but call upon Him, He will deal with us as our souls need. If others be against us, He will deliver; if we are faulty ourselves, He will correct but forgive.
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John Gifford Bellett was an Irish Christian writer and theologian, and was influential in the beginning of the Plymouth Brethren movement. Bellett was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was educated first at the Grammar School in Exeter, England, then at Trinity College Dublin, where he excelled in Classics, and afterwards in London. It was in Dublin that, as a layman, he first became acquainted with John Nelson Darby, then a minister in the established Church of Ireland, and in 1829 the pair began meeting with others such as Edward Cronin and Francis Hutchinson for communion and prayer.
Bellett had become a Christian as a student and by 1827 was a layman serving the Church. In a letter to James McAllister, written in 1858, he describes the episcopal charge of William Magee, Archbishop of Dublin, that sought for greater state protection for the Church. The Erastian nature of the charge offended Darby particularly, but also many others including Bellett.
The pair bonded particularly over prophetic issues, and attended meetings and discussions together at the home of Lady Powerscourt, and Bellett and Darby (along with the Brethren movement in particular) were particularly associated with dispensationalism and premillenialism.
Bellett wrote many articles and books on scriptural subjects, his most famous works being The Patriarchs, The Evangelists and The Minor Prophets.