What is the most
influential event of all time?
Historians’
opinions in response to this question vary.
Some historians
are for Industrial revolution and some others support the French Revolution as
the most influential event in human history.
It is natural for
the Marxist historians to argue in favour of Russian Revolution and Muslims in
favour of the revelations received by Prophet Mohammed.
But the most
important event of all time is indeed the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt.
Why I make this
claim?
Because Exodus
directly or indirectly generated many of the important events cited by other
groups.
Let me tell you an
example:
The Ten Commandments
open with these words:
Exodus 20:2 & 3
2 "I am the
LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage.
3 "You shall have no other gods before Me. (NKJV)
This statement
cancels all absolute status not only of all other divinity but also of all
other human value system.
That means,
neither money nor power, neither economic nor political system has the right to
demand absolute loyalty.
Thus God cancels
all value system of the world that caused discrimination between men.
God stands as the
only true and worthy source of life demanding all loyalties of men.
All human loyalty
is assigned only to God and thus all human stand equal before God.
This
is the key to democracy.
The Exodus
transformed the Jewish people and their ethic.
Christianity and
Islam adopted the covenant at the Sinai as their core value system.
More than half of the
world is profoundly shaped by the aftereffects of the Exodus event.
In modern times,
the widely disseminated concept of human freedom carries the same message of
redemption.
The secular
concept of redemption says:
“Do not accept
disadvantage or suffering as your fate;
Rather, let the
world be transformed!”
In a way, humane
socialism is a secularized version of the Exodus’ final triumph.
The liberator is
dialectical materialism, and the slaves are the proletariat–but the model and
the end goal are the same.
What I mean is
that the story of the Exodus of Israelites has all claims for the most influential
event in human history.
It has been
influencing human history and the influence is an ongoing process.
The secret of the impact of the Exodus
What is the
secret of the impact of the Exodus on human life?
The
Exodus event has a unique place in God’s plan.
After
this great incident it is referred to about 120 times throughout the Old Testament
and it symbolizes God’s power.
It
is an example of why Yahweh is worthy to be worshipped.
The
Exodus is not just a symbol; it really happened.
The secret of the
impact of the Exodus is that it does not present itself as ancient history.
The Exodus is not
a one-time event.
Exodus is
remembered by all Jewish family at least once in a year by the reenactment of
the event.
Thus the event is
as an ongoing experience in human history.
The
Jewish understanding of God has two foundations:
1)
God created the world - Shabbat
is the testimony
2)
God intervenes in human affairs
- Exodus is the testimony.
Judaism proclaims that nothing
happens in the cosmos -- no electron encircles an atomic nucleus, no cell
divides, no star is born or dies -- without Divine will animating it at every
nanosecond.
An example is the Jewish blessing
before drinking a glass of water that states: "Everything exists by Your
word."
That means the glass is filled
by H2O at this moment only because of God’s will.
Otherwise it simply would not
exist.
This is the real meaning of the
oneness of God.
There are no forces of any kind independent
of God.
The Slavery
Israelites were in
Egypt for more than 400 years.
Their former years
were peaceful and prosperous.
They went there as
special invitees of the King Pharaoh because of Joseph.
Joseph gave Egypt
life during the great famine and helped to build the great nation.
Joseph was
considered to be a man of special divine revelations by the Egyptians.
Even after the
death of Joseph, his bones were kept safe in the kingdom.
There were
prophesies by fortune tellers of Egypt that a great doom will fall upon on the
nation if the bones of Joseph were taken away from the country.
But the later
years of Israelites were of hard slavery.
All the stories of
Joseph and divine intervention through him for the country were forgotten.
The Israelite
community grew in number to the size of a nation.
The Israelite
community was foreign and considered to be a threat and financial burden to the
nation.
The first attempt
of the king pharaoh was to reduce the number of the Israelite population.
When that failed,
he decided to treat them as slaves and torture them.
No slaves were
paid salary except the base necessities like food, shelter and clothes.
In this way they
would help to build the country and the country will not suffer a financial
burden.
Thus day by day
their slavery became more and more hard.
They were tortured
by the Egyptian slave masters.
So they cried to
God for deliverance.
Israelites were
aware of the promise that God made to their father Abraham.
God promised to Abraham
to deliver them from the slavery after a certain period.
A land of
prosperity and peace was promised to their father Abraham through a blood
covenant.
They believed in
it and cried for deliverance.
They did not know
how it will happen.
The crying
generation of Israelites never experienced the mighty Yahveh, the Lord.
They never had a
meeting with Yahveh.
All they knew was
the numerous god’s of Egypt.
At the same time
they knew that their God is Yahveh, the Lord, the God of their fore fathers
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
They believed that
He is mighty and faithful to deliver His people.
Moreover, the Children of Israel
were slaves to the strongest nation on earth.
Egypt was surrounded by potent
fortifications and daunting deserts.
No slave ever escaped from
Egypt.
By the laws of nature, there was
no possibility for the Israelites to achieve freedom.
Only God could
deliver them from the slavery in Egypt.
Even against all
odds they had hope that Yahveh will intervene in their life.
This is the faith
Abraham had in Yahveh when he went up the mountain to sacrifice his only son,
Isaac.
This is the last
hope of the people.
And God cannot
forget His people because of the covenant with Abraham and the promise to Isaac
and Jacob.
God has pronounced
their deliverance and inheritance of the Promised Land and it will never go
void.
God’s promises
started working as it is spoken by Him.
So God decided to
intervene.
Thus there came
Moses to the scene announcing the imminent Exodus to a kingdom in the Promised
Land.
Moses was absent
and forgotten for 40 years.
Moses was never a
part of their sufferings.
Moses did not grow
as a slave; he was never tortured by Egyptian slave masters.
Moses grew in the
palace and then ran away to another safe place.
Now he is here
announcing the exodus and entry into a new Kingdom prepared for them by the God
of their fathers.
Moses did announce
not only the exodus to a promised land but introduced the God of their fathers
to the people.
The people must
know that Yahveh is their God
Israelites must
know who Yahveh is.
Being slaves for
many years, Israelites would have accepted it as a way of life.
There is always a
comfort in slavery too.
They accepted
Egyptian gods and worshiped them.
They enjoyed the
food in the country.
They expected the
ceremonious burial of the dead in Egypt.
They cried because
of the torture.
But Moses came not
to announce comfort in slavery, but exodus to a new Kingdom.
So they should
start the journey, consistent in the journey and conquer and inherit the
Kingdom.
For this purpose
they first should know who Yahweh is.
They must know the
strength and authority of Yahweh.
Yahweh controls
the whole world and no other deity has any part in it.
Exodus 10: 1,2
1 Now the LORD
said to Moses, "Go in to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the
hearts of his servants, that I may show these signs of Mine before him,
2 "and that you may tell in the hearing of
your son and your son's son the mighty things I have done in Egypt, and My
signs which I have done among them, that you may
know that I am the LORD."
(NKJV)
Egyptian gods and Yahweh
As I have said
before, Egypt was the richest and mighty nation during the time.
They had a history
of overcoming the great famine 400 years ago.
Not only that they
had food, but also they provided food for neighboring nations.
Thus they became
richer.
All nations of the
time had their own gods.
They had a chief
deity and other subordinate gods.
Myths surrounded
them was the official religion of the nation.
The people of the
nation believed that all blessings, victories and power came from their gods.
All other nations
surrounding them also had to admit it, as long as the nation remained
prosperous and powerful.
Let us keep in
mind that each and every nation had their own gods and myths.
So wars between
nations were really war between gods.
Wars tested and
proved the might of their gods.
Yahweh the Lord
had no nation at that time.
Worship of Yahweh
existed from Adam, throughout the centuries.
But He had no
nation like Egypt.
Yahweh had been intervening
in human history for more than once.
Once Yahweh the
Lord destroyed all human beings except the family of Noah by a huge flood.
Then He destroyed
the attempt of man to build a huge tower called Babel to worship the sun god
during the time of Nimrod.
Yahweh had been telling
the people again and again that He is the creator and sustainer of the whole
universe.
He is in control
of the universe.
But people forgot
all these incidents after a few years.
No nation accepted
Yahweh and worshipped Him.
People like Noah
were lonely figures in the larger community which worshiped gentile gods.
So Yahweh, in
order to fulfill His purpose of redemption of humanity chose Abraham to create
His own nation.
Abraham and his
descendents generally worshiped Yahweh.
They believed in
Him, His might and blessings.
But now the people
of Yahweh were living in a foreign land as nomads and slaves.
Yahweh was not
considered as a great God by Pharaoh or any other neighboring kings.
In this scene, God
appeared, announced His nation, His community of people.
He commanded
Pharaoh to set free His people, Israelites to worship Him.
God’s intervention in human history
So far Yahweh was not an important
God for the majority of nations.
They had their own gods and they
provided them protection and prosperity.
God
intervenes in human history at this junction.
God has to prove His might and
authority
Yahveh had to prove that
He is in control of the universe and not the gentile gods.
It must be proved that Yahweh is
the only true god and all else are false concepts of divinity.
Every component of the Exodus
was meant to reveal that God is in control of the universe.
This is why the Exodus is repeatedly
mentioned and continually remembered by the Israelites.
Yahweh is always in control of
the universe.
The Exodus demonstrated God's
love for humanity and how he intervenes in human destiny for the sake of their
collective and individual redemption.
God continues to intervene in
human history to fulfill his purpose about the human race.
The Exodus of Israelites from
the slavery of a mighty nation to freedom and the Promised Land is a pattern
set by God.
There after God continues to
work again and again for His people in this pattern of deliverance and
inheritance.
Exodus was also a
national introduction to God.
Hereafter God will have a nation who He will
deliver and preserve His people.
And this nation will always stand as a foil to
other nations and their deities.
God meets His own
people for the first time as a nation at Mount Sinai.
There he established a covenant with His own
people that declared that He will be their God and they will remain always as
His own people.
Exodus
6:7
'I will take you as My people, and I
will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the LORD your God who brings
you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. (NKJV)
The
meeting of God and Israel at Sinai was not a meeting where God dictated
numerous laws with the purpose to kill His people.
Here Yahweh met His own nation for the first
time.
It is the place where the nation and their God were
declared.
And unlike the gentile gods and nations, Yahweh
entered into an everlasting covenant with His people.
By this covenant, God delivers and
preserves His people for a great purpose.
Exodus and Jesus
The
Exodus is a portrayal of the physical deliverance of His people of Israel out
of the land of bondage.
At
the same time, Exodus was a spiritual deliverance also.
Exodus 14:31 Thus
Israel saw the great work which the LORD had done in Egypt; so the people
feared the LORD, and believed the LORD and His servant Moses. (NKJV)
The ten plagues
destroying the false power of Egyptian gods and the might of Egypt as a nation
was the way of war that Yahweh chose to fight against the nation.
After destroying the
might and wealth of the Egypt, God commanded His people to walk out of it.
God was not
satisfied by destroying the power and wealth of the enemy kingdom, He wanted to
separate His people forever from the slavish masters.
The parting of the
Red Sea, the passing of Israelites through it and the final closing of the sea
once again separating the Egyptians and the Israelites for ever has a deeper
implication in the Kingdom planning of God.
God wanted to
separate, protect and preserve His people.
Yahweh will have a
nation of His own that will influence the human history hereafter.
Prefigured
Christ
All these
incidents also prefigured the greater spiritual reality of God’s redemption of
His people from slavery to sin through the work of Christ into the Kingdom of
God.
The
Exodus event is a foreshadowing of the deliverance from bondage of satan –
namely, the resurrection of Yashua.
Yashua
yielded to death in order to identify Himself with the people who are under sin
and satan.
His
resurrection from death is the deliverance from the slavery of sin, forever.
The
resurrection of Yashua displays God’s great power.
Like
the Exodus, it really happened.
And
believing in this event is linked with the deliverance from the bondage of sin.
The God who worked in history for Israel is alive and
working today.
The exodus from
Egypt, though a real, historical event, prefigures the saving work of Christ
for His people.
What
God did through Moses was to provide physical salvation from physical slavery.
What
God does through Christ is to provide spiritual salvation from a spiritual
slavery.
The Israelites
were slaves in Egypt, and all those live today without Christ are slaves to
sin.
The passing
through the Red Sea is symbolic of the believer’s identification with the
death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Israelites were
separated from the slave masters of Egypt for protection and preservation in a
new Kingdom in the Promised Land.
And those who
believe in Christ’s death and resurrection are separated from the slavery of
sin for protection and preservation in the Kingdom of God.
Since the death
and resurrection of Christ, a great Exodus is happening.
This Exodus is of
people from all nations, races and languages through Christ.
All those who call
upon the name of Yashua are delivered from the slavery of sin and satan’s
kingdom.
The meeting of
Yashua and His people happens at the Cross where the great sacrifice for the salvation
is done.
There a
progressive covenant is signed with the blood of Yashua to inherit the Kingdom
of God.
God’s intervention continues
God’s intervention
in human history does not end with salvation through Christ.
It goes beyond to
the eschatological deliverance.
Another greater
Exodus is going to happen.
Apostle Paul is
speaking about this eschatological Exodus in the following passage.
1 Thessalonians 4:16 & 17
16 For the Lord
Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel,
and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be
caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And
thus we shall always be with the Lord.
(NKJV)
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