the showing of God's power

[skyblue888]

I would like to share a chapter from a book that I have read and studied over the years and which presents a very interesting explanation to the following passage of Scripture and some statements from the SoP. I will break it down into small posts so it is easier to read. Hope you are blessed by it as much as I was.

"But indeed for this purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth." Exodus 9:16.

"Still the heart of Pharaoh grew harder. And now the Lord sent a message to him, declaring, ‘I will at this time send all My plagues upon thy heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like Me in all the earth... And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to show in thee My power.’ Not that God had given him an existence for this purpose, but His providence had overruled events to place him upon the throne at the very time appointed for Israel’s deliverance. Though this haughty tyrant had by his crimes forfeited the mercy of God, yet his life had been preserved that through his stubbornness the Lord might manifest His wonders in the land of Egypt. The disposing of events is of God’s providence. He could have placed upon the throne a more merciful king, who would not have dared to withstand the mighty manifestations of divine power. But in that case the Lord’s purposes would not have been accomplished. His people were permitted to experience the grinding cruelty of the Egyptians, that they might not be deceived concerning the debasing influence of idolatry. In His dealing with Pharaoh, the Lord manifested His hatred of idolatry and His determination to punish cruelty and oppression." Patriarchs and Prophets, 267, 268.

"He [Moses] was informed that the monarch would not yield until God should visit judgments upon Egypt and bring out Israel by the signal manifestation of His power. Before the infliction of each plague, Moses was to describe its nature and effects, that the king might save himself from it if he chose. Every punishment rejected would be followed by one more severe, until his proud heart would be humbled, and he would acknowledge the Maker of heaven and earth as the true and living God. The Lord would give the Egyptians an opportunity to see how vain was the wisdom of their mighty men, how feeble the power of their gods, when opposed to the commands of Jehovah. He would punish the people of Egypt for their idolatry and silence their boasting of the blessings received from their senseless deities. God would glorify His own name, that other nations might hear of His power and tremble at His mighty acts, and that His people might be led to turn from their idolatry and render Him pure worship." Patriarchs and Prophets, 263.

These statements inform us that God realized a purpose in His dealing with that rebellion. It was that Egypt, Israel, and the nations beyond, were given the opportunity of seeing something of the magnitude of God’s power, the corresponding futility of human resources to either control or contain what it had required God’s power to withhold, and therefore the utter necessity of human recognition of, and dependence upon, the arm of the Almighty. Implicit in all was the message that the protection of the all-powerful One was available only to the obedient.

But essential to the success of the divine plan was the presence upon the Egyptian throne of an extremely stubborn king. It was by God’s providence that just such a king was there at the very time when the hour for Israel’s deliverance had come. Alternatively, God could have placed upon the seat of power a more pliable ruler.

Once again, unless these words are read in the light which streams from the life and teachings of Christ in a spiritual depth exceeding the rather humanistic superficial study of the past, they will be misunderstood.

to be continued

[skyblue888]

If God is obsessed, as earthly rulers generally are, with the demand that all men give unqualified acknowledgment of His position and authority as the absolute ruler of the universe, then His motivation in exhibiting His infinite power would be to instill respect, thus insuring that He be given the homage He feels is His due.

Thus His message to all nations would have been, “Take warning, people of the earth. I am making an example of the Egyptians so you will know how I treat those who do not give Me the respect I deem Mine. Dismiss any thought of resistance, for My power is such that none can contend with Me. This Pharaoh of Egypt was the greatest on earth. He was more hardened and stubborn than all of you. He dared to resist My will. See him now shattered and dead. Now serve Me, or I shall deal with you likewise. Know that I will brook no insubordination nor even the ignoring of My claims upon you.”

The vast majority are convinced that this is the message the Lord communicates through His activities in Egypt. But careful reflection upon the implications of this assessment of God’s behavior in Egypt quickly reveals that it cannot be true. For God to conduct His affairs as outlined above, would show Him to be self-centered, self-exalting, self-loving, and therefore totally unrighteous.

God is love to the infinite degree. It is impossible for Him to be love and at the same time manifest any selfish characteristics. Both views cannot be held. The two positions are entirely incompatible and, in fact, hostile to each other.

To maintain the concept that God did act from self-interest is to make Him like every Caesar, dictator, emperor, king, despot, potentate and, in short, every unconverted man. The further such depart from righteousness, the more acutely they exhibit this supreme concern for self, and its attendant preoccupation with demanding homage and respect from others. On the other hand, the nearer men approach to God and become like Him in character, the more this disposition diminishes.

to be continued

[skyblue888]

As we behold Christ we cannot find a character more devoid of selfishness. He gave no place for even the faintest suspicion that He had come to establish recognition of His position and authority for His own sake. Christ, as the revelation of the Father’s character, swept away forever any basis for the notion that God unveiled His power in Egypt to bring the world to heel.

Therefore, He is not burdened with any concern over His position or of the giving of recognition and obedience to Him for His own sake. Thought of Himself and His position never troubles Him.

But He is actually aware of the fearful peril in which every human being on the earth stands. He knows that in the Garden of Eden, man cast away the protection of the law and instituted in God’s place, one who could not control the powers surrounding this earth.

He knows that only because of the interposition of His Son are these perils held in control during the period of probation. He knows Christ cannot maintain His station as Protector of the people of the earth while their mounting attitude and spirit of self-sufficiency demand He vacate that role. Therefore, as a loving Father, He views with deepest distress, the developing self-centeredness and foolish, self-destructive boldness which is edging His wayward children nearer and nearer to the abyss. As such a situation develops, He will do anything within the limitation of law to save them.

Men are unaware of how they benefit from God’s power; that they are living under a divinely supplied umbrella of protection. In their folly, they leave God out of their reckoning. They do not recognize His power or how it is at work and so remain in ignorance of it and what it is doing for them.

Therefore, for those who had not the eye of faith and so could not see God’s wondrous power, the revelation could only come by the power being withdrawn. Then, as storm, tempest, fire, earthquake, or pestilence ravaged them, they could see by the might of what came, the measure of the power which had previously held it all back.

This is not the way God desires His might to become known to humanity, for it exacts tremendous cost to life and land. Therefore, He labors with all the resources of heaven to prevent such a crisis from developing. But He cannot compel men to obey. They must serve Him from love—intelligently, or not at all.

"Since the service of love can alone be acceptable to God, the allegiance of His creatures must rest upon a conviction of His justice and benevolence." The Great Controversy, 498.

"He takes no pleasure in a forced allegiance, and to all He grants freedom of will, that they may render Him voluntary service.” The Great Controversy, 493.

to be continued

[skyblue888]

But, despite the utmost entreaties of infinite love, humans such as the Egyptians, will press on in defiance of love and entreaty to that point where God’s power will be revealed by its withdrawal.

When God is forced to remove His hand from the helm, He still continues to work from the same love. While the loss to life and property will be enormous, He will work to salvage much from the wreckage.

Firstly, He will endeavor to arouse individuals from the very midst of the unrepentant to an awareness of their need of that power which alone can withhold the fearful forces of nature and man. Likewise, He will seek to impress the same saving truths upon the thinking of the onlookers near and far to encourage them not to act with rash irresponsibility.

God will never engineer these conditions in order to convey these lessons, but when they develop in spite of His best efforts to prevent them, then He will use them to fulfill a valuable service to the needy.

This work is not done in vain. When the Israelites left Egypt, many of these people went with them. During the time of the plagues, when Moses announced the coming of the hail, a number of the farmers revealed their newly formed convictions by hurrying their livestock into shelter.

In Exodus 9:18, 19, it says, "Behold, tomorrow about this time I will cause very heavy hail to rain down, such as has not been in Egypt since its founding until now. Therefore send now and gather your livestock and all that you have in the field, for the hail shall come down on every man and every beast which is found in the field and is not brought home; and they shall die."

Here we have a wonderful example of God’s saving character in action. If He had been desirous of destroying the Egyptians and their possessions by the hail, then why did He warn them of its coming and tell them to seek shelter? Not only did He try to save them from the hail, He also designated the approximate time that it would come so that no one would have to guess and be uncertain. This incident clearly shows that God did not send the hail to destroy them. It came in spite of His best efforts to prevent it, and when that failed, then He did as much as He could after that to warn them that it was coming in order to save as many as were willing to be saved.

"He who feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his livestock flee to the houses." Exodus 9:20.

to be continued

[skyblue888]

These were not the only people helped. It was a lesson to the Israelites as well as the far away Canaanites, who would have had cause to take a pause in their headlong rush into total iniquity and its attendant destruction. Thus God achieved a saving purpose through events which He had untiringly worked to prevent.

Naturally, the more intense, prolonged, and total the destruction; the more emphatic the lesson; the more God’s message was underscored. Such it could not be without the presence on the throne of a Pharaoh who was especially stubborn and rebellious. As we read in the opening statements of this chapter, the Scriptures under study here declare that God’s providence saw to it that it that this haughty tyrant would be upon the throne in order that God’s purposes might be accomplished. See Patriarchs and Prophets, 267, 268.

The same truth is repeated in Daniel 4:17. “This decision is by the decree of the watchers, and the sentence by the word of the Holy Ones, in order that the living may know that the most High rules in the kingdom of men, gives it to whomever He will, and sets over it the lowest of men.”

These Scriptures likewise call for a careful, thoughtful, and above all, prayerful consideration, for they can be seriously misunderstood.

If, for instance, it is to be drawn from these words that God personally determines who shall occupy positions of leadership over the nations and elects those men irrespective of the wills of the men and their nations, then serious questions about God’s character must assert themselves.

It would mean that in the great democracies when men cast their votes, they are merely puppets in God’s hand to execute His will. Worse still, some rulers only come to power through rigged elections, lobbying, threatenings, and many other unrighteous methods. Some rise to power along a path slippery with the blood of their opponents.

Does God work through such measures as these?

to be continued