Joshua 4:6

What mean ye? God knew His people, knew how soon they would forget His great works of deliverance for them unless provision be made for keeping this great event in mind. Future generations must not be permitted to forget God’s leading. Even so today “we have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history” (Life Sketches 196). There were 12 tribes and 12 stones, all the people thus being represented. There were two monuments — one erected in the midst of the river, and another of stones taken from the bed of the river, set up at the site of their first encampment in the Land of Promise.

These monuments to the power of God were to be a memorial of the successful completion of the wilderness wanderings. The murmuring, rebellion, and disappointment of the wilderness were to be things of the past. In the Red Sea, Israel had been “baptized unto Moses” (1 Corinthians 10:2); here they were baptized, as it were, unto Joshua. Through these demonstrations of His power God sought, among other things, to confirm the confidence of the people in their appointed leaders (Joshua 3:7; 4:14).