Plague In The Gulf

Moses was sent to Egypt by G_d to free His chosen people from the bondage of Pharaoh. Depending on the math you choose to utilize, those people had been in slavery for around four hundred years. Thus began the Exodus as recorded in both the Bible and the Torah, and Israel became a nation following forty extra years of wandering in the wilderness. But there is much more to the story than the Creator freeing his chosen people and giving them His law out on the high deserts of Sinai. G_d also gave Egypt and their ruler a meticulously painful object lesson in recognizing His supremacy through a series of plagues. One of my favorite movies, The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston as Moses, ends with Pharaoh explaining why he could not stop Moses and the Children of Israel: “Because his god… is G_d.”

As Moses begins the attempt to free the Israelites, by the power of G_d he begins to defeat each individual Egyptian deity, beginning with Pharaoh - who was considered to be divine by the people of Egypt. The authority of Pharaoh was represented by a coiled serpent; he wore the golden emblem of a cobra on his headdress. Moses threw his rod on the floor of the throne room and it became a serpent. This miracle had been previewed in the desert when Moses first answered G_d’s call, and I can speculate that Moses understood the symbolism at the time as he was actually raised by the Egyptians. Oddly enough, the Egyptian magicians performed the exact same feat, only to watch in horror as Moses’ serpent devoured their own serpents in turn. The rod of Moses overcoming the rods of the Egyptian magicians was a very literal symbol of the G_d of Moses overcoming the gods of Egypt, beginning with the Pharaoh himself.

Moses explained The Lord's plan to Pharaoh by saying, “And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.” Next came the plague of the Nile River turning to blood. The Egyptian god Hapti was said to rule the Nile and cause its annual inundations, and the river was believed to contain the god Osirus’ transformed blood. In addition, the Egyptian god known as Hatmeyt was worshipped as the fish goddess. When Moses smote the river with his rod, it became blood. Not only did it become undrinkable for the Egyptian people, it also caused the fish to die. This was only a foretaste of the plagues to follow, each one an attack on a particular Egyptian god. Space here does not permit me to go into detail on each one, but you get my drift. G_d, in His power, destroyed Egypt and ‘cut them off’ from the face of the earth. Although He is Lord of Israel, we should never forget that He is Lord, Ruler, and Creator of all the earth first. And He shares His glory with no one and nothing.

I was reading an article on the oil spill in the Gulf this morning, and it gave me pause when I grasped the consequences we face here in the South as a result of this disaster. The reader comments at the end of the article gave me a specific insight into the thought process of most of the people in our nation on the disaster. Everyone is blaming BP, and rightly so, and there is plenty of blame being placed on the government for the response to this date or lack thereof. It was also clear that many did not care for impetus being placed on the current administration, and they were vocal about it. The argument continued on both sides and I read all that I could stomach within only a few moments. But it made me wonder about Egypt of old, and G_d’s object lesson for Pharaoh and his people. I’ve said it before in this blog; we seem to worship our government as our provider for whatever we need and look to them for solutions for all of the things that go wrong in our lives. We take no accountability for ourselves these days. By the same regard we place our faith and trust in our technology to step in and save the day in hand with that same government whenever the need arises.

As I read the reasons why the government is not doing more and has not taken over the disaster (BP has the technology and experience to better do so) and clean up (BP should foot the bill, they caused it!) I can only shake my head in disgust. There were other articles from very knowledgeable people in power with suggestions including but not limited within the realm of using nuclear weapons to destroy the broken well. (I kind of liked that idea, myself. Nuke it and rain all of that oil and radioactive fallout on Shannon and his family. Yeah, that'd do it.)

During this going-on-two-months disaster, I see very little suggestion or barely a mention that maybe we should be praying and turning to G_d for a solution. Ah, that would be taboo, I know. The god of technology will eventually save us and the god of government will make everything better once we finally reach a solution. The god of legal torts will make a lot of people rich, too, once the situation is under control – wait and see.

I’m not fiddling while Rome burns here, and I write this with not even a minute hint in my heart of gloating. The situation is critical, and we cannot fathom the damage that will be done to the coastline for many generations to come. My point this morning is that we have put our faith and trust in things we honestly should not have. In many ways, Daniel’s explanation to Belshazzar still applies to us today: “And thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified:” It is becoming blatantly obvious that the god of government cannot see beyond the legal ramifications of an issue before it has even been solved, and the god of technology cannot hear the damage that is being done to the environment due to the profits that are on the table to be made. As they stumble around blind and deaf, heavy crude oil continues to flow steadily into the Gulf of Mexico, and the true Creator of the Universe who holds our breath in His very hands has been deemed to be too politically incorrect to be called upon.

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