<p>10:5 <em>However with most of them God- </em>The majority of them (Gk.) were strewn down along the way (Gk.). Faced with the apostasy at Corinth, Paul was pointing out that as the majority of Israel failed to make it, so the new Israel should not be over confident that this feature of the type doesn't apply to them too.</p><p><em>Was not well pleased</em>- Repeatedly this phrase is used in the Gospels to describe how God was &ldquo;well pleased&rdquo; in Christ (Mt. 3:17; 12:18; 17:5). The implication may be that it is through being &ldquo;in Christ&rdquo; that God will count us acceptable, rather than by our keeping our nose clean of the more public sins of fornication and idolatry.</p><p><em>For their dead bodies were scattered over the wilderness- </em>The Greek means to lay prostrate- the very language of idol worship. Old Testament passages like Ezekiel 20 are clear that Israel worshipped idols in the wilderness, having smuggled them with them through the Red Sea. And this was their death. Clearly idol worship was an issue at Corinth, with some of them still believing that idols represented pagan gods who had actual existence (8:7-12). The same image of the carcasses of Israel laying unburied in the wilderness is found in Heb. 3:17. Ps. 91:5-8 speaks as if the condemned generation were struck down one by one, by day and night, and the faithful Joshua was strengthened not to be fearful as he regularly experienced men falling dead literally at his side (Ps. 91:7) and saw carcases, sometimes in the thousands, laying in the wilderness. The frightened people simply hurried on, with no time to bury the bodies. The journey must&rsquo;ve been a fearful and depressing experience, with sudden death a daily reality. They were after all experiencing condemnation; it was a death march. Perhaps the destruction of the rejected will be the same at the last day. And yet that death march of the condemned generation is clearly used as a type of our journey from baptism to the Kingdom. In a sense we are living out our condemnation now, so that we will be ultimately saved (1 Cor. 11:29-31). It does us no harm to reflect upon the reality of condemnation, so that we may sense more keenly the extent of God&rsquo;s grace in saving us from wrath through Christ. As soon as we start to think that surely all this can&rsquo;t mean that the majority of those baptized into Christ may also fail to make it, we must bear in mind the reasoning of Hebrews and Romans which warns us against feeling like that. On the other hand, God&rsquo;s grace is such that we can have every confidence that very many will reach the Kingdom, as many as the grains of sand on the seashore. But the possibility of failure, the sense of the future we might miss, must be deeply felt by us. We <em>cannot</em> assume that as a community of believers we are any better than natural Israel. Reflecting for a moment on the possibility that the majority of those we know who are baptized will not make it, we are left with sober introspection- &ldquo;Lord, is it I?&rdquo;. This thought alone inspires an intensity in seeking to abide in Christ.</p>