Today we begin Exodus Chapter 10.
For the Complete Jewish Bible, click here.
For the King James version, click here.
“Otherwise, if you refuse to let my people go, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your territory. One won’t be able to see the ground, so completely will the locusts cover it.” -Exodus 10:4-5
We are now at the eighth plague.
As usual, the interactions between Pharaoh and Moses and Aaron are pretty much a repeat of what we’ve witnessed thus far.
Moses and Aaron announce to Pharaoh that if he does not free God’s people, the next day Egypt will be hit a with a plague of locusts so devastating that it will devour what was left of the crops from the destructive hailstorm that previously occurred.
However, a couple of things have now changed.
First, any defiant attitude that Pharaoh’s sorcerers and advisors may have had is now gone.
They beg Pharaoh to wake up and smell the coffee.
Can’t he see that Egypt is practically on the verge of destruction?!
Another change is that Pharaoh seems to be getting more serious about letting Israel go as he asks “Exactly who among you are going?”
Moses tells Pharaoh that it will be EVERYBODY- men, women, children and even their possessions will go.
This response does nothing but to confirm Pharaoh’s paranoia that Israel is going to leave Egypt and NOT return.
Infuriated Pharaoh attempts to force a compromise by telling Moses and Aaron that only the men will be allowed to go and he then throws them out of the palace.
Of course, this isn’t good enough for God and so He sends the plague of locusts.
There’s an interesting point about these plagues against Egypt I want to talk about.
So far we’ve seen bloody water, hail, skin boils, and now locusts.
I think we have a tendency to view these strikes against Egypt as quite primitive, a means only befitting the ancient times in which they occurred.
Some might assume that if the Lord was to level judgement against a nation in our day, it would be a lot more sophisticated.
Many Christian scholars and writers have this tendency to convert visions of God’s prophets into these super high-tech Star Wars scenarios.
In our modern age, wouldn’t the Lord use fancier things like laser beams, nuclear bombs or biochemical weapons?
Well, my answer is not necessarily.
I can tell you from personal experience that God using just the forces of nature alone would be just as effective and terrifying as any weapon of destruction that man can concoct.
I am living in Japan now and was here when the great earthquake and tsunami struck.
I was actually working at Tokyo Electric Power Company as a contracted translator at the time and had the opportunity to view the tsunami real time on a live video camera.
I’ll never forget how awestruck I was when I witnessed the onslaught of the waters so effortlessly toppling over houses and buildings like a baby would destroy a house made out of a lego set.
I’m not going to say that what happened in Japan was the judgement of God, but one thing for sure that left an indelible impression on me is that the forces of nature are indeed awesome.
So many people, men, women, and children, the young and old, the healthy and the handicapped, had their lives along with all their aspirations, hopes, and dreams snuffed out in an instant.
The truth is every one of these strokes we’re reading about in Exodus would be just as devastating today as they were 3000 years ago in Egypt.
Remember God’s patterns and principles repeat all throughout history.
The same natural elements that we see in the plagues against Egypt repeat themselves in the judgements against mankind depicted in the Book of Revelations.
For example…
The first trumpet causes hail and fire that destroys much of the plant life in the world (Revelations 8:7).
The fourth of the seven trumpets causes the sun and moon to be darkened (Revelations 8:12).
The fifth trumpet results in a plague of “demonic locusts” that attack and torture humanity (Revelation 9:1-11).
And from out of the seven bowl judgements called forth by the seventh trumpet, we have the following:
The first bowl causes painful sores to break out on humanity (Revelation 16:2).
The second bowl results in the death of every living thing in the sea (Revelation 16:3).
The third bowl causes the rivers to turn into blood. (Revelation 16:4-7).
The fifth bowl causes great darkness and an intensification of the sores from the first bowl (Revelation 16:10-11).
The judgements we will read about in the Book of Revelations are the same God-patterns originally established in the Torah.
It is God’s way to deal with mankind and His own people in a very consistent fashion.
This is why is to so important to study our Torahs before jumping into the New Testament.
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