COME AS A CHILD - LESSON 124 - LOCUSTS AND HEAVY DARKNESS

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

I wonder what was going through the mind of Moses in the middle of all the plagues of Egypt?  Of course he would have been realizing how powerful his God is, and I'm sure he would have been thankful for the fact that God was not punishing the Israelites along with the Egyptians.  Do you think he ever wondered how long and how many plagues he was going to have to predict to Pharaoh?

As we have studied Moses in the act of helping God deliver Egypt, we have seen the river turn to blood.  We have seen frogs and gnats and flies.  We have seen the people have to deal with boils.  We have seen the death of livestock and hail.  All of these plagues have come upon Egypt because of Pharaoh’s hard heart.  

A funny thing is happening now though; God keeps telling Moses that He is the One who has been hardening the heart of Pharaoh and his officials! God doesn't say this every time; but many of the times He does.  Why would God harden someone’s heart?  Would that not be taking away their free will?  We are told that God gives us free will and lets us make our own choices.  Seems very strange for God to be doing this.  

In the beginning of Chapter ten of Exodus God explains His actions.  He is doing all of this for a reason!  It is so that He may perform his signs among the Egyptians and right in front of the Israelites so that Moses can see and tell his children and grandchildren how God dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how God performed signs among them!  It was so Moses and his children and grandchildren and all of the people of Israel might KNOW that God was God, and the ONE TRUE GOD was teaching His people the first commandment – "Thou Shalt Have No Other God’s Before Me."  Moses and Aaron were the two witnesses who could claim that they were actually there on the scene when God showed Egypt his power and might and sovereignty.

Even way back before God formally called Israel out and gave them the ten commandments, He was beginning to teach the people the best way to live.  The beginning of knowing the best way to live is to know, believe and recognize that God is above all and over all.  It was VERY important for God to get His people to see and understand that He did not want them worshiping pagan gods and He did not want them to put any other gods before Him.  God was calling out a people to be His own special nation, a nation set  to bring the whole world to salvation in the end.  He needed them to start out believing in His sovereignty.    

This lesson of the best way to live was SO IMPORTANT to God that He was willing to use some stubborn, selfish people who were deceiving others in order to teach the rest of the people the truth.  The truth was that Pharaoh wasn't really in charge!  God was in charge!  Pharaoh and his people had always worshiped false pagan gods and now THE REAL GOD was showing the Egyptians as well as His own people which of all the gods was REAL.  Not only did God want this generation of Israelites to know and recognize Him as THE ONE GOD; He also wanted them to pass down this truth to every generation that came after them.

And you know what?  It has happened just as God proclaimed it should happen.  Each year as we celebrate the Passover Seder, we teach our children about the plagues of Egypt.  We get detailed so they can know exactly WHO the God of the Hebrews is that we now worship and they can make a distinction between the REAL God and the false gods.  They can see in the story the consequences of believing in each.  Through the story of the plagues they understand the sovereignty of God.  They see that the REAL God brings life.  They see that the false gods bring death.  What could be more important to be teaching our children?  It is a lesson that is reviewed in detail every year, just as God has commanded.  Just as God was teaching the Children of Israel way back when; so we must be teaching today!  

God intended for this to be one of the first lessons to children in learning how to worship.  It is vitally important.  I say this from my own experiences.  Yet; today as I look around I also see these lessons have been set aside by many as unimportant and "something that happened to the Jews a long time ago, that do not pertain to us now."  Nothing could be further from the truth!  Though it is not openly spoken of you can see the seeping into our culture of the ways of pagan gods.  This is out there surrounding us every day, it is just not mentioned.  It is hardly noticed because we have become accustomed to it all.  You almost get the feeling of "if you ignore it, it will go away."  The worst thing a culture can do when paganism is seeping in is to ignore the situation.  That is exactly what Satan wants to happen.  That is what happened with the Egyptians, and God was not about to let that happen to the Israelites too.  They were to continue to KNOW the TRUTH and pass it down to all of their generations.  The fate of the world hinged on this one fact.    

Think about this as you study the rest of the story, and later we will go into the prophetic meaning of all of these plagues.  God had more than one reason for us to notice these details.  They may mean the difference in how we survive in the end times; but more on that later.  Let's get back to following Moses and hear the rest of what happened with Pharaoh. 

So Moses and Aaron went again to Pharaoh and said to him, “This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says : “How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?  Let my people go so that they may worship me.  If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow.  They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen.  They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields.  They will fill your houses and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians – something neither your parents nor your ancestors have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now.”

Moses turned and left Pharaoh to chew on those words.

Pharaoh’s officials were standing there with him and they turned to Pharaoh and asked him “How long will this man be a snare to us?  Let the people go, so that they may worship the LORD their God.  Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined?”

So they brought Moses and Aaron back to Pharaoh and he told them to “Go, worship the LORD your God, but tell me who will be going.”

And Moses told Pharaoh that they would go with their young and their old, their sons and their daughters, and their flocks and their herds, because they were to celebrate a festival to the LORD.  Today we know this festival as The Seven Days of Unleavened Bread.  It occurs on the days following Passover and is considered part of the Passover festival.  The ancient Hebrews were the first to partake of a week of unleavened bread right after the first Passover happened in Egypt.  When this festival is celebrated we remember coming out of Egypt, leaving sin behind.  The leaven in the bread is symbolic of sin; and it is left out; just as happened with the Israelites we will hear about later in this story.  It is symbolic today of our desire to leave pagan gods and their ways out of our lives and stay true to The One God of Heaven and Earth.   We will speak further of this as we go along in the continuing story of how Moses led the people out of Egypt.  Right now, Pharaoh is being extremely difficult and hard-hearted again!

At first Pharaoh said “The Lord be with you.”  Then he hesitated and asked out loud, “If I let you go, along with your women and children………..Well….  Clearly you are bent on evil!  No!  Have only the men go and worship the LORD, since that is what you have been asking for.”

After Pharaoh decided that only the men could go; Moses and Aaron were driven out of Pharaoh’s presence.  That wasn't what God had commanded.  It would NOT work.  The Passover isn't just for the men, though it IS an annual requirement for every head of each household.  It is set in place for ALL THE HOUSEHOLD; each family including men, women, boys and girls, young and old alike.  All are invited to be a part of God's table, and God's feast and festivals.  God had declared that ALL of the people be allowed to go out to the wilderness and proclaim a festival to worship Him.  

Because of this mistake on Pharaoh's part, God said to Moses; “Stretch out your hand over Egypt so that locusts swarm over the land and devour everything growing in the fields, everything left by the hail.”

Moses stretched out his staff over Egypt, and the LORD made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night.  By morning the wind had brought the locusts; they invaded all of Egypt and they settled down in every area of the country in great numbers.  There has never been a plague with so many locusts; nor will there ever be such a plague again!  

The locusts were so many that the ground was black as they covered it.  They devoured everything in sight, everything growing in the fields and on the fruit trees.  Nothing green remained on a tree or a plant anywhere in the land of Egypt. 

When Pharaoh saw this he panicked!  He summoned Moses and Aaron and said that he had sinned against their God and against them.  Pharaoh asked them to forgive him once more and he also asked them to pray to the LORD to take away the deadly plague.

 

Moses prayed to the LORD and the LORD changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea. 

The swarms of locusts were all gone now; but again the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not let the Israelites go!

This being the case; the LORD told Moses to stretch out his hand toward the sky so that darkness spread over Egypt.  

It was a darkness that could actually be felt.  

When Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky the total darkness covered all of Egypt for three whole days.  No one could see anyone else or move about for three days.  Still, during this same time,all of the Israelites had light in the places where they lived.

 

Once again Pharaoh called to Moses and told him to “Go worship the LORD.  Even your women and children may go with you; only leave your flocks and herds behind.”

Moses explained to Pharaoh that they must have sacrifices and burnt offerings to present to the LORD God. Who goes to a festival without an offering?   Moses explained that in order to do this the livestock must go with them; all of them.  They would need them for sacrifices as well as food for the festival.   And when he said this the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart again.  He was not willing to let them go.  He told Moses to get out of his sight!  Pharaoh said he never wanted Moses to come to appear before him again!  He threatened to kill him if he ever saw his face again.  

“Just as you say,” Moses replied.  “I will never appear before you again.”  

It can be noted that Moses never again appeared before Pharaoh.  Now Pharaoh had no one to intercede between him and God.  He was isolated without any help.  Sometimes God isolates us without help in order to draw us unto Him and help us to come to our senses.  This didn't seem to work with Pharaoh.  Unless Pharaoh learned to speak directly to the REAL God of Heaven and Earth instead of his fake gods; he and Egypt were doomed.  Pharaoh had made a very bad decision in giving up his intercessor.  It was totally up to Pharaoh to turn to God and change things for Egypt.  Pharaoh wasn't learning the lesson.     

Don’t you know Moses was glad to go?  I’m sure he was pretty tired of having to deal with Pharaoh!  Do you have any Pharaoh's in your life?  Deal with them as long as God bids you to do so; then leave when God tells you to "go."  Only God knows if they will ever turn or not.

So now we have seen the Egyptians go through two more plagues; one of locusts and one of total thick darkness that could be felt.  

Why do you think God sent locusts and thick darkness on the land? 

The plague of the locusts focused on Nut, Osirus and Set, the false gods of the harvest.  The locusts took away all of the crops, leaving nothing for harvest.  The wheat and rye, the latter crops that had survived the hail were all gone now.  These are the crops that God's people always see around Pentecost.  They always brought an offering of barley at Passover and the wheat offering was offered at Pentecost; but Pharaoh's people in Egypt did not have any crops left to give to their fake gods.  Only the people of The One True God of Heaven and Earth had sufficient sacrifices and they were the only people now willing to offer them up!  

There was absolutely nothing left to harvest in all the land of Egypt.  Where were the gods of the harvest that usually protected their crops?  This is clearly a case of God saying He is the only real God.  It was as much for the Israelites to see as the Egyptians.  God intended for the Israelites to tell these stories to their children and grandchildren in order that the truth of God would be passed down from generation to generation and the horrid mistakes of the Egyptians of worshiping the wrong gods would never be repeated again.

The plague of the darkness was clearly an 'in the face' move of God toward the most worshiped pagan god named Ra.  Ra was the god of the sun.  There was no more sun!  For there days thick darkness covered the earth.  The sun god was dead!  There was no sign of Ra anywhere.

God was clearly showing that these false gods were not real gods.  They did not even exist.  They were imaginary in every way, and they had no power at all.  All of the things they stood for were turned on them and they never showed up to defend themselves!   What better proof could be offered?   

Ra was the god that was supposed to be Pharaoh’s ancestor.  That was where the power of Pharaoh was supposed to come from.  There clearly was no power passed down from Ra to Pharaoh, for Pharaoh was helpless now and sitting in the darkness without even the light of his false god.  Only the Israelites had light.  That is because the REAL God of the Hebrews is the Father of lights.  In HIM there is no darkness at all.  The Israelites could see clearly while the Egyptians groped around in the darkness.  Pharaoh had no one to turn to this time; not even Moses.

COME AS A CHILD LESSON 122 HOPPING FROGS DIRTY LICE AND NASTY FLIES

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

It seems that we all have our own Egypt; places in our souls that must be set free of the idols that we have set up for ourselves.  Leaving Egypt is always a long hard process full of hazards and plagues, and it is not possible for anyone to escape without God's help.  It is very hard to let go of our false illusions and man-made ways.  For some weird psychological reason we cling to the very bondage that holds us back from total freedom.  Such was the case with Pharaoh.  

Seven days had passed by since the LORD turned the Nile to blood.  Seven days would have been plenty of time for Pharaoh to repent, after all - God created the whole world in just seven days; but not a word of regret was heard from Pharaoh.  Ah well; mankind seems to have taken seven thousand years to even begin to repent, perhaps Pharaoh isn't so unusual in this matter.  

Many think that God allowed Pharaoh mercy by giving him time from one Sabbath until the next Sabbath to acknowledge that He was God; but Pharaoh kept up his worship of the Nile and all the many false gods that went with it; in spite of the fact that what he considered to be a river of life had been turned into a river of death.  He still could not see that he was not god himself and that there was a TRUE God to be reckoned with in the end.  

God told Moses once again to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let the people go to worship Him, and if this did not happen God promised to send a plague of frogs to Egypt.  He promised they would come up into the palace and the bedrooms and the beds of Pharaoh, and He promised they would invade the places of Pharaoh’s officials.  They would be everywhere, even in the kneading bowls and the ovens.  God promised the frogs would even come up all over the people themselves as well as all over Pharaoh. 

Why frogs?  Well it isn't so strange considering that frogs were associated with the Egyptian fertility goddess Heqt (or Heket) who had the body of a woman and the head of a frog.  She was part of the worship that stemmed from the River Nile, and the frogs that lived in the river were considered to be her sacred symbols.   Since the people of Egypt had basically been worshiping frogs for a long time now, perhaps God just decided to let them get real up-close and personal with their sacred frogs.  He was about to let them see what it felt like to have the dumb cold reptiles they worshiped in their homes, inside their beds, and crawling all over their dishes!  I wonder how they could possibly think of them as deity now?  

So Moses told Pharaoh about all of this and as usual; nothing was done to let God's people go.  

Then God told Moses to tell Aaron to stretch out his hand with the staff held over the streams and canals and ponds to make the frogs come up on the land of Egypt.  So Aaron did this and the frogs came up and covered all the land. 

And wouldn’t you know; Pharaoh’s magicians were standing by watching.  They turned around and mimicked the miracle again!  They used their secret arts to command the frogs to come forth.   How brilliant!  That little trick simply added to all of the frogs that were already there!  The magic was suddenly NOT very helpful!   These magicians were not quite as smart as they thought they were.  They didn't seem to be solving any problems with their dark magic; they were only multiplying them!  The frogs hopped into all of their houses and because of their religious belief that the frogs were sacred the Egyptians were powerless to stop them.  They still associated the frogs with their fertility goddess and the process of birth.  So Egypt became a real hopping place, literally.

Finally from his palace full of croaking frogs, Pharaoh called to Moses and asked him to pray for God to take the frogs away.  He promised if this happened that he would let the people go and offer sacrifices to God in the wilderness. 

So Moses told Pharaoh to set the official time for him to pray for release of the curse, and Pharaoh said “tomorrow.”  Isn’t that a bit odd to you?  Why didn’t he ask Moses to begin to pray immediately?  But isn’t that so much like all of us other humans too?  We know we need to be praying without ceasing, asking God’s will for our life as we constantly go along, but we keep putting off our prayer times, living in our messy lives, waiting for tomorrow.  Sometimes we seem as bad as Pharaoh.   Who knows what Pharaoh was thinking in putting off the time to end the curse.  Was he afraid of letting go of the hope of the power of his false gods?  Was he afraid of the people finding out that God was God and he was only Pharaoh?  Do you think in back of his mind that he realized this all along, but just did not want to admit it?   Was he holding on to the illusion of power and refusing the reality of true power?  I doubt we will ever have the chance to ask him.

Moses agreed to pray for the frogs to leave on the next day.  He promised Pharaoh ahead of time that God would remove all of the frogs except for those that lived in the Nile.  

So Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh and Moses cried out to the LORD about the frogs and the LORD did what Moses asked on the next morning; exactly as had been scheduled by Moses and Pharaoh.  All of the frogs in the houses, the courtyards and the fields died.  They were piled up in heaps and the land smelled really bad because of them.   This was sort of an ironic twist; to see the symbols of fertility laying dead all over the land, just the opposite of what the people had been taught about their false gods.    Perhaps their fertility goddess wasn't so powerful after all.  Oh well, at least they were rid of the frogs; but please continue to hold your breath, those dead frogs really stink!

Isn't that the way it goes?  You finally get rid of your BIG troubles, but you still have the SMELL of them.  That horrible smell created by your own sins just seems to linger on, even after all the problems are over.  Whenever you decide to mess around with false gods it usually takes awhile for things to get back to normal.  So it was with Egypt.  So it is with us.

When Pharaoh saw that all the frogs were dead, he hardened his heart once again and did not keep his promise to let the people go.

 

Pharaoh still chose to call himself a god, and to continue to worship the false gods of Egypt instead of acknowledging the One True God of Israel.

So the LORD told Moses to tell Aaron to take his staff and stretch it out, then strike the dust of the ground.  All throughout Egypt the dust of the ground became full of ugly little gnats or some type of insects that were like lice.  Suddenly these horrible little bugs were everywhere.  They were all over the people and all over the animals.  If you have ever encountered lice; you can't  get rid of it easily.   The land was totally infested. The people were miserable.  The little insects clung to their skin and their hair and made them itch all over.  The more they scratched, the worse they itched!  Can you imagine a whole country of people scratching and clawing themselves at once?  It would be impossible to carry on with any type of normal life.  The labor force and all the official people who drove them on would have been helpless and totally unproductive.  

All of these gods were supposedly running around Egypt and all the people could do was scratch and itch!  How pitiful!  Could their gods do nothing?

Another of the  false Egyptian gods was named Geb.  It seemed that he was supposed to be the god of the earth.  Offerings were given to Geb to insure the bounty of the soil.  That was probably why God told Aaron to strike the ground with the staff and produce the lice from the dust.  The soil of this false God only yielded lice!  Do you think God was smiling to himself and remembering how HE, the One True God of the whole universe had made mankind from the dust of the earth?  Who was this false god, to claim to have power over the soil?  Yet, the Egyptians thought Geb was a great god!   You would think that a great god like Geb would have been able to defend his domain, and protect the soil that brought the food supply to Egypt; but once again the false Egyptian god was powerless in the face of the REAL God.  With the lice clinging to their bodies the Egyptian priests who prided themselves on their total cleanliness at all times, would no longer be able to serve in the pagan temples of Geb because they would have been considered to be unclean.    Actually NO one could enter the temple now; all the people were unclean.  

When the magicians of Pharaoh saw this plague they tried to mimick it too, once again relying on their secret arts, but this time they could not even come close.  Even these over-confident, self-reliant magicians became frightened. It seemed that the demons and evil spirits could only do as much as a True God allowed them to do, and they were not helping the magicians any more.  This seemed to be above their pay grade!   The magicians and sorcerers went to Pharaoh and admitted the truth saying:  “This is the finger of God!”  Surely hearing those words from these men would change Pharaoh's mind; but Pharaoh’s heart was still hard and he would not listen to anyone.

So the LORD told Moses to go meet Pharaoh early in the morning as he went to the river and tell him:  “This is what the LORD says, let my people go, so that they may worship me.  If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into their houses.  The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies.  Even the ground will be covered with them.  But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen where my people live.  No swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I the LORD, am in this land.  I will make a distinction between my people and your people.  This sign will occur tomorrow.”

So the very next day all that the LORD had told Moses to say came to pass.  Swarms of flies poured into Pharaoh’s palace and in the houses of his officials.  All of the land of Egypt was ruined by the flies.   The people of Israel living in the land of Goshen, however, were not involved.  They went about their daily business without one fly in their midst.  

Most scholars think the word that our bibles translates as "flies" actually refers to all kinds of different biting and stinging insects.  You might have already guessed this; but insects were worshiped as gods in Egypt too.  Utachit was known as the god of the flies, and the false fly god Khepra was often shown as a scarab beetle.  The Egyptians thought that worshiping the gods who controlled these insects would keep the insects from attacking them.  The only one who could actually do this was the God who was telling Pharaoh to let His people go.  

Perhaps Pharaoh looked around and saw that only the Egyptians were being swarmed by the insects.  This time God had set his people apart and they were not in any danger.  The insects were leaving them alone.  

Pharaoh finally summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God here in the land.  But Moses said that would not be right.  The Egyptians detested when they sacrificed to their God, and they would stone the Israelites for doing this in Egypt.  Moses declared that they MUST take a three day journey into the wilderness to offer their sacrifices to the LORD, just as He had commanded them to do.

So Pharaoh finally finally agreed to this, only he demanded that they not go any further than a three days journey, and he asked Moses to pray for him before they left.  Moses said that he would pray as soon as he left Pharaoh, and tomorrow the flies would be gone; but he warned Pharaoh that he must not act deceitfully again, and that he must keep his promise to let the people go. 

So Moses went off to pray and the next day all of the flies were completely gone.  

Of course, as soon as things went back to normal again, Pharaoh did not keep his word!  

We are all a bit like Pharaoh.  We are quick to pray when we have an emergency and to recruit everyone else to pray with us and for us.  We promise God all kinds of changes; but as soon as our prayers are answered and the emergency passes; we forget all of our promises to God and go on our way again.  

You would think at this point that Pharaoh would have seen that God was the ONLY REAL GOD of heaven and earth and that he would fall on his face, repent and relent.  Some men can be very stubborn though.  Moses and Aaron were caught right in the middle of God making it very clear to Egypt that pagan gods had no power and that He was the only true God of the universe.  

How many plagues would it take for Egypt to believe and put away their false gods?  

How many plagues do you think it would take for all of mankind today to do the same thing?  

Do we not on this very day have leaders that are telling us that bad is good and good is evil?  

Isaiah 5:20 comes to mind both for Egypt and those who live in the world today: 

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.  Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight."

COME AS A CHILD - LESSON 121 - A RED RIVER OF DEATH

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

After Moses and Aaron had done all that God commanded of them before Pharaoh, and their snake had eaten the snakes of all of Pharaoh’s magicians; Pharaoh still would not let the people go.  

So God told Moses to go out to Pharaoh in the morning as he stood by the Nile River with his staff in his hand.  Say to him again that The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you:  "Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness.  But until now you have not listened.  This is what the LORD says:  By this you will know that I am the LORD:  With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood.  The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink, the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water.”

Then God told Moses to take his staff and stretch out his hand over the waters of Egypt – over the streams and canals, over the ponds and all the reservoirs – and they will turn to blood.  Blood will be everywhere in Egypt, even in vessels of wood and stone. 

Moses and Aaron did just as God commanded.  When Moses raised the staff in Pharaoh’s presence and struck the water of the Nile all of the water changed to blood.  The fish in the Nile died.  The river smelled.  The people could not drink the water.  Blood was everywhere in Egypt. 

Once again Pharaoh called his magicians and they did the same thing with their secret demonic arts.  Pharaoh still refused to listen to Moses and Aaron, just as God had predicted would happen.  Instead of taking all of this to heart, Pharaoh simply turned and went into his palace. 

All of the Egyptians dug wells along the banks of the Nile since they had no drinking water from the river. 

This changing of the water to blood was the first of ten plagues.  It was a horrible plague!  Imagine having no water to drink and being surrounded by stinking blood and the smell of dead fish.  The dead fish also affected the food supply.  

I think it is a bit comical that Pharaoh even asked the magicians to imitate this!  Why bring on more?  But we all know that the magic used by the magicians was just that; an imitation of the real thing.  So like the usual method of operation for Satan and his demons.  They can never do what God can do; they can only produce a counterfeit; something that appears to be the same that isn’t the same at all.  They were only capable of creating illusions.  

I doubt these tricks seemed too amusing to the people standing by with no water and no fish to eat, smelling the stinking river for seven days in a row.  I can just hear their comments now:  “If these guys are really magicians, then why are they not turning the water BACK to water?  Why are we having to endure this plague of the blood for so long that we are going to be forced to dig new wells in spite of the fact that we are located conveniently next to what used to be a very clean river and a good water supply!”

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the blood of the Nile River, there was more to this story than being thirsty and hungry.  The main lesson being, the fear of God and the fact that God IS the ONE and only God.  The Egyptians had idolized the Nile. They worshiped it!   They used the river to enforce their pagan beliefs for their pagan gods. 

They had used this same river to drown the Hebrew babies.  Now the  same river that had been the scene of so many deaths looked the part it had played.  It was not a god at all; it was a stinking, bloody river in which innocent babies had been murdered.  

The truth eventually shows itself.  The counterfeit falsehoods of Satan can only stand for awhile.  Eventually God Almighty comes and sets the record straight.  Take note America.  Take note all you other countries in the earth that agree to murder unborn babies and sell their body parts for profit.  You twist the truth to fit your idols; yourselves.  Eventually God Almighty will set the record straight!  It is just a matter of time.  The truth of your idolatry (bowing to the almighty dollar) will show forth and the whole world will know who you really are.  

In Egypt, the land knew that the King who had murdered innocent little babies was now the King who had to dwell by a bloody stinking river with no water or no fish.  He was surrounded for seven days with the evidence of what he had done – death.  He could not escape.  Blood was on his hands and in his river.  The air he breathed smelled of death, the thirst in his throat felt of death, everything everywhere spoke of death.  How do you think it felt to him to be living in the same horrible circumstances that he had created for others in order to live in a luxurious palace and enjoy the life of a King?  

The people’s eyes must surely be opening to who their King really was, but he did not budge from his stubborn decision not to let God’s people go!  No, Pharaoh like so many others living today, never wanted to change his ways.  He wanted to remain the greedy murderer that ruled the land forever.  He was not even sorry for his sins.  This all sounds painfully familiar, as if it might not JUST apply to Pharaoh. 

The plague of the blood lasted for seven days and Pharaoh did not change his mind.