Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The Ten Plagues of Egypt:
Objections and Questions About God, Part Three

God’s Primary Objective

What is God’s primary objective in the Plagues and the Exodus? Is it merely to emancipate His people? Is it to retaliate and punish the Egyptians for enslaving the Israelites? Is it to show His power and might?

And is God being sincere and honest when He, through Moses, tells Pharaoh to let the people go in order to worship God for a few days? Or was that a ruse (a lie), with the real plan being to never return? If freedom was the plan, when might we say that the people were truly free? After the death of the first born? After the crossing of the Red Sea? Or were they truly free only when they reached Sinai and received the Ten Commandments and other Law?

Being Truth, God could not have been dishonest when He had Moses tell Pharaoh merely to let the people go worship Him.

Thus, it would appear that the primary objective of the Exodus was not political freedom, but religious freedom, the main objective was for the people to know Him and receive the Law. Only then would they be truly free.

Another objective would appear to be to part of the on-going battle against polytheism, to demonstrate, in the defeat of Egypt’s false gods and death cult by powerful and wondrous deeds, that the Lord is the One, True, and Almighty God. (Compare God’s revelation of Himself in Egypt to His speaking to Elijah in a whisper in 1 Kings 19.)

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