The Philistines, knowing that they cannot stand before the God of the Ark of the Covenant, devise a plan to send it back and do an experiment at the same time:

“So here’s what you do: Take a brand-new oxcart and two cows that have never been in harness. Hitch the cows to the oxcart and send their calves back to the barn. Put the Ark of GOD on the cart. Secure the gold replicas of the tumors and rats that you are offering as compensation in a sack and set them next to the Ark. Then send it off. But keep your eyes on it. If it heads straight back home to where it came from, toward Beth Shemesh, it is clear that this catastrophe is a divine judgment, but if not, we’ll know that God had nothing to do with it—it was just an accident.”

So that’s what they did: They hitched two cows to the cart, put their calves in the barn, and placed the Ark of GOD and the sack of gold rats and tumors on the cart. The cows headed straight for home, down the road to Beth Shemesh, straying neither right nor left, mooing all the way. The Philistine leaders followed them to the outskirts of Beth Shemesh. (1 Samuel 6.7 – 12, MSG)

I’d like to report that having seen this overwhelming evidence (a successful experiment!), the Philistines decided to worship and serve the true God. Nope. The Philistines have believed in God all along. Look at their response to the Ark coming to the battle in chapter 4:

We’re done for! Who can save us from the clutches of these supergods? These are the same gods who hit the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues out in the wilderness. (1 Samuel 4.8, MSG)

And after the Ark was in Philistia:

When the leaders of Ashdod saw what was going on, they decided, “The ark of the god of Israel has got to go. We can’t handle this, and neither can our god Dagon.” (1 Samuel 5.7, MSG)

“We can’t handle this, and neither can our god Dagon.”

But believing is not the same as following.

Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That’s just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? (James 2.19, MSG)