SEASONS - DAY 50 - ARRIVING AT PENTECOST

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

Jesus knew that after His resurrection and ascension into heaven we would feel lost without Him.  The Holy Spirit resolved that problem, connecting heaven and earth, the Messiah and His Bride even when they were apart in time and space.

June 11 at sunset begins the time of Pentecost for those of us who follow the Hebrew calendar dates.

For 50 days now we have been counting from the days of the time of the offering of the omer, the first of our first crops for the year, counting from Passover to Pentecost just as God showed our ancient ancestors to do.  

In ancient times the offerings were only physical, but in today's world and in the time of our living, those who faithfully observe this traditional custom are offering up the best of the best of our spiritual AND physical offerings beginning during the week of Passover and observing the count of the days until Pentecost.  

We offer from what we have to offer to The One God of Heaven and Earth, the One who came down in the form of our Savior, Jesus Christ to save us from ourselves and we begin during these next 50 days to examine in a closer, more intimate way, how this works in our lives as we count up the time, waiting on God's greatest gift until The Son of God returns, the giving of God's Holy Spirit. 

We have been counting through seven weeks and seven holy Sabbaths, trying to open our eyes wider to the will of God in our daily lives.  Seven times seven days of counting from the time of the omer offering, just waiting to come to the day that God has appointed and made sacred which we now know as Pentecost, or as the faithful Jews call it; Shovout.  

Each day of the counting we have been studying the attributes of God and attempting to apply His goodness and the holy traits of His character to our lives in a daily, routine manner.  

We have been on yet another journey of considering and examining our lives before a Holy God, listening to God, thinking of the fact that He IS God and we are made from the dust of the earth, learning to live dependent and in awe of Him, and waiting on the day of celebrating the giving of The Torah first, then the completion and fulfillment of that by the giving of The Holy Spirit.

The first event gave us God's advice on the best ways to live.  We received the Torah containing The Ten Commandments of God.  The second event gave us God's solution to how mankind can achieve this.  We received abundant LIFE through the holy offering of Jesus Christ on a cross.  He died on what He created for the ones that He created and He rose to new life!  The greatest offering, given on Passover just as the story has always unfolded, brought it's fulfillment as an engagement gift on Pentecost!  His holy death and resurrection took away our guilt and inability to fulfil the first requirements and made the blessing abundant and possible for us!  It is only by these two precious gifts from our Beloved that we can do anything at all worthwhile on this earth.  

We have been counting and waiting and learning and growing all the while.  We have also been preparing our hearts for a wedding to the Son of The King!  Now we reach day 50.  We have reached the Day of the celebration of Pentecost!  It is just the same as becoming engaged officially and announcing the wedding plans to the world!  The Son of God has proclaimed His Beloved Bride; His one true holy church.  Those who have God's Holy Spirit living inside of their hearts and bodies belong to Him now.  He has officially proclaimed us as His own, and He will return for us one day to take us to The Marriage Supper of The Lamb.  The Passover is our way of rehearsing this moment.  We have all been schooled and are now simply like the ten virgins in the parable who were told to keep oil in their lamps and wait on the groom.  He is coming back for us!  We must be ready.    

Pentecost is a glorious day!  At first we received the law, then we received a gift from the one who has overcome the dependency we had on the law.  We have received a huge, loving package from heaven from our Groom!  He has sent us by special delivery a very special gift that will help to keep Him safely inside our hearts until the wedding feast.

Can you see the symbolism?  Those who count the days cannot help but see, it is hard to miss it when you are waiting on the times to be fulfilled.  Pentecost is full of symbolism.  We were told that Jesus asked his disciples to go to Jerusalem and wait on that first Pentecost after the Ascension.  When the Holy Spirit came down from heaven men were filled with God's Presence from within and it appeared as if flames of fire were resting on their heads as they spoke the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all languages to all people groups.  This reversed the tower of Babel.  For the first time, everyone heard each other and understood without a language barrier!  It was the language of the heart of God speaking to those whom He loves very much! It was an amazing day!  A day we celebrate constantly, not just once a year, but a day definitely to be commemorated and exalted above all other ordinary days.   Many wear red on this day to remember the flaming tongues of fire.

Many people also relate the symbolism of a dove to the day of Pentecost.  Do you know why? 

When you release a dove it returns to its home; if it is at all possible the dove does not return ANYWHERE ELSE but home.  If it can't find home, the dove will always be seeking home.   

Remember the story of Noah, when he released the dove in order to search for land?  Perhaps Noah released the dove from the ark to see if it could find their old original home prior to the flood.  We don’t know how far away the ark landed from Noah’s old homestead.   When the dove could not find home, he returned to Noah.  Personally, I don't think God wanted Noah to find the old because He had made everything new.  Noah gently and lovingly took the dove back inside the ark and waited seven more days.
  

After Passover when we came to know and believe in how Christ died and was resurrected to new life, we also began to feel the change and renewal He brings to us.  It is our belief in his death and resurrection that makes this possible.  Like the dove; God’s Holy Spirit is always seeking a place to land inside our hearts.  He searches and searches until He finds it.  We begin to prepare for this by believing and repenting of our sins.  Our souls start to change, and begin to be renewed, like the land of the earth after the flood.  The first seven days are a time of considering what it means to change, to be renewed and refreshed by the power of  a Holy God. 
   

Noah knew that doves always return home.  This was just one of the reasons for sending out the dove from the ark, just as Jesus ascended into Heaven, yet through The Gift of God's Holy Spirit he remained at home with us.   

Another reason Noah had for using a dove was that he knew that the dove would always return for his mate, just as we know Jesus Christ will one day return for us and take us to that heavenly home that The Father has prepared for us.  

If the dove had found home; he would have returned for his mate to take her back home with him.    Not only would the dove return to the ark and Noah, but when Noah took the dove back inside the ark it would go straight to the cage of his mate and if the dove had found green food it would regurgitate a portion for her.  

In the second of the seven weeks we have realized that Christ our beloved is going to return for us, the church, His bride.   In our dwelling on this thought, we have begun to prepare; to do the things that brides do when they are waiting on their wedding.  Like the mate of Noah’s dove, we wait and count the days.  God is feeding us all the while on His Word, teaching us on our journey as we wait on our marriage to Christ.  


Doves will not touch unclean things.  They only eat the good green food preferably grown

from the best fruit trees of the land.  Noah could observe the dove feeding his mate and know if the dove had found dry land in the vicinity of home.   

Also Noah could tell after a while by the droppings of the dove if greenery had been eaten on the journey.  

So, when the dove returned Noah took it in and watched it as it flew back to it's mate.  Noah observed that the dove was not able to feed its mate indicating that it had not found enough green growing food in the land to eat and it was not yet time for Noah's family to step out of the ark onto their new life.  Noah waited patiently, as did the dove.  When Christ returns; what will he find on this earth?  Will it be ready? 

 In the third of the seven weeks we are still not yet ready for strong food.  We are still gaining the strength of believing and being cleansed from the inside out, still repenting, still longing for our mate to return to us.  On the third week we know we are halfway through the waiting and we must become more acutely prepared for the return.  We begin to ponder and think through the things that are most important for our upcoming marriage to The Lamb of God.

The old sages talk of how the earth grieved as the flood waters went down.  Legend has it that the earth was ashamed because it would not yet have crops grown when the appointed harvest times arrived for the next offerings to God.  The earth had to start anew with growing things.  When we give our hearts to Christ, we too have to start anew with a growing process.  It takes time, we must be patient and wait on God.  Fruitfulness does not come to one instantly after salvation; there is a process of sanctification involved in our growing in The LORD.  These fifty days that we count and wait remind us to be patient and keep pursuing the One we love with all our hearts.  Sanctification is a process.  We fall and we get up and we repent and we start over again and again.  The fifty days of counting remind us not to give up!
    

Noah saw the dove's mate that faithfully waited in the ark for the return of her beloved, and he saw the dove's mate's sure return with nourishment and strength and hope for the one he loved and cherished.   Noah knew the returning dove brought hope of home again.  
   
In the second month and the twenty seventh day of the month God spoke to Noah and said “Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your son’s wives with you.”   And God told Noah to bring the animals out of the ark too.  They all came out and back onto the earth.   It was time!  New life was beginning!  

Today many in God's church are grieving.  Our hearts grieve because we are not yet ready for our groom.  Our hearts have to start anew with growing.  We have a growing process to go through in order to be ready.  We must start!  Time is passing.  Everyday is precious. 

The fourth, fifth and sixth weeks are huge growing times in our waiting on Pentecost to come.  We realize the urgency of time; just like a bride seeing the days of the calendar unfold.  In these times we experience the putting into practice of the things that God has shown us.  We can't just think it; we must be DOING!   Our hearts are getting stronger, more able to respond to God, ready to be filled in the seventh week with an extra blessing of God’s Holy Spirit.  

We have prayed for The Holy Spirit to come and on this very special day we receive that wedding gift that says, "keep this until I come for you, it is to remind you that I am close, that I am coming!  It is to help you know that you have My heart at all times, even when you are in the storm, even when the water is deep and you cannot walk on your own, even when you are not sure that the water is receding."  

Pentecost comes as a special wedding gift from our Groom in Heaven.   It is to encourage our hearts and make our lives better!   We come to it at the end of  the act of counting our days, hoping, studying the Word, having faith, waiting on God's timing.
  

When God sent out The Holy Spirit for the first time after the Resurrection on The Day of Pentecost, The Holy Spirit found God's followers very similar to a dove seeking his mate. The intention was to gather and eventually bring back home a whole and perfect bride for the Messiah.  This day from God, which He had appointed long ago was like sending out an invitation for mankind to come inside the ark of heaven and find rest with God forever. No need to worry.  We are safe until the flood is over.  No more tossing and turning through the seas of life and floods, but it was an offering of peace, a time for renewal!

Like Noah standing and waiting for the dove's return from the bow of the great ship, the Messiah would be waiting for the Bride in heaven.  The disciples were told to wait in Jerusalem, much like the dove's mate waiting faithfully in the ark.  Often in the refining work of God’s Holy Spirit a process of waiting is involved.  This is why we take the time to count the days!  We, like Noah, must be sensitive to this fact.  Noah had to wait patiently for seven more days before he sent out the dove again.  

Why seven more days?  

Why not eight, or nine or ten, or only one?  

Because; Noah was a faithful keeper of the Sabbath.  Every seventh day was a day of corporate worship, a time that Noah and his family set aside to spend with God.  They put aside their work and chores and they focused on God’s will for the next week of their lives.  Together they worshiped and rested and the animals rested and worshiped with them.   

As they rested, they listened to what God had to say to them without any worldly distractions.  This was a special set-aside time for seeking God’s face.  
To miss a Sabbath would be unthinkable to a man like Noah.  He understood that God had appointed sacred times and seasons.  He was always counting and waiting on the Seventh Day.  This is why many believe that the dove was being sent out on the Sabbath day, maybe as a type of thank offering from Noah to God and also a way of seeking an answer from Him on what to do next.  

Noah would make his offering and wait on God to answer.  This happened like clockwork, every seventh day.

The second time that Noah sent out the dove it came back again, but this time Noah saw the dove feed it's mate little green olive leaves by regurgitating his food and sharing a portion with his mate.  This strange process brings to mind a picture of a godly man who would never just hand his wife and children a bible and tell them to read it and understand it on their own.  He ingests the word into his soul and lives it out himself first, taking it into his own heart before giving it out to others.  He chews on it, digests it, and when the time is right, he pulls the nutrients out of it for his own family.  It is the same in sharing God's Holy Spirit with others.  The Spirit must first live inside of us before we have the ability to pass it on to others.    

I smile each time I think of this and remember that my granddaughter is named Olivia.  I have prayed for her from the time she lived inside her mother's womb, even before that, and her name is so symbolic of Pentecost and the receiving of God's Holy Spirit.  I know the root word "olive" means so much.  I am thankful that she was given this name.

This practice of feeding used by the returning dove to bring nourishment to his mate told Noah that there was dry land once more and that land contained olive leaves.

Olive leaves were such a wonderful sign!  To this day the people of God often go out during The Feast of Tabernacles and bring back olive branches to build the temporary shelters they inhabit for the feast.  They probably think of Noah and remember the faithful dove when they do this act.  These olive branches used for building during the feast days are symbolic of Jesus sending The Holy Spirit to dwell with us in the temporary shelters of our physical bodies until he could return to us again.  I love how the Holy Days of God are all interconnected with one another.  Passover leads to Pentecost and Pentecost is still celebrated in The Feast of Tabernacles at the end of the sacred year.  One lesson of God builds on the next.  God was so wise in teaching us these things this way; humans can be so forgetful, but when we live them out through celebrating these Holy Day, we remember!
  

Jesus knew that after His resurrection and ascension into heaven we would feel lost without Him.  The Holy Spirit resolved that problem, connecting heaven and earth, the Messiah and His Bride; even when they were apart in time and space.    They were always beloved to one another, connected in their hearts and souls.  It became official on Pentecost!  This is what is achieved by the gift of The Holy Spirit dwelling inside of each of God's children.  This Holy Spirit living inside of someone is how you will recognize them as a child of God.  The indwelling of The Holy Spirit is what causes people to be resurrected from their graves into new life in God's Kingdom.

When the Holy Spirit comes to us, our bodies become temporary shelters; little temples or tabernacles created and designed especially to house The Spirit of God; just as the ark was the temporary shelter of the dove and Noah.
  

How significant that the dove brought back an olive leaf to give to his mate who was faithfully waiting inside the ark, never doubting his return.  This is one reason why Olive oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit.  It is always used for anointing people with the power and healing strength of God.

Many, many years later, after the flood of Noah, God gave his prophet Zechariah the ability to see into the future.  Zechariah spoke and wrote of two olive trees and olive oil and olive branches that he saw in visions from God.  His visions helped the church (the dove’s faithful waiting mate) to see and understand that Jesus (represented in our story by Noah) is the source of that great old Olive tree and through His Holy Spirit (represented by Noah's Dove) the golden oil of grace flows out to believers that keep their lamps burning and/or those who stay filled with God’s Holy Spirit.  

God's people, much like Noah as he prepared the great ark, must stay ready and be prepared for whatever God tells them to do and where ever God leads them to go.  This is true of the church now in this day and time more than it ever has been in His-Story (history.)

Noah witnessed God at work through the dove just as we witness God at work through His Holy Spirit.  

It must have been hard for the dove to leave his mate behind.  He must have wanted some way to comfort her as she rested and waited for him in the comfort of the ark.  Jesus must have felt the same as He left the earth full of his followers and returned to His Father to complete his purpose.  He gave us The Comforter, The Holy Spirit to help us while He was away from the earth.  The Holy Spirit is our connection to our Beloved, Christ.

The Olive branches symbolized hope of a better future and hope is always the beginning of a new and better life.  

Noah’s family had hope, but they were still inside the ark, so Noah waited seven more days and sent the dove out again seeking an answer from God on when to leave the ark.  This time the dove did not return.  This must have told Noah that the world was once again ready for habitation.  However, Noah and his family did not leave the ark until God said for them to leave.  Noah again waited seven more days. 

Are you prepared to leave the ark of this earth and meet your Bride Groom in heaven?  Are you ready, filled up with the oil of God's Holy Spirit?  If not, you simply need to ask of God and it will be given to you.  Hold up your clean and believing hands (cleaned from repentance and as an act of believing faith) and receive God's greatest gift into your life today.  This is the oil that never runs out.  All you have to do is ask with a true heart.  God is waiting on you to ask.  

With Pentecost accomplished, just like that new world that Noah's family stepped into, a whole new beginning comes to God’s church.   My favorite quote from the lips of Jesus is:  "I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW."

Praise to Almighty God for The Sacred Appointed Day of Pentecost!

COME AS A CHILD LESSON 123 DEAD LIVESTOCK BOILS AND A VERY BAD HAILSTORM

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

Once again, God told Moses to take a message to Pharaoh.  God said to tell him “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.  If you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back, the hand of the LORD will bring a terrible plague on your livestock in the field – on your horses, donkeys and camels and on your cattle, sheep and goats.  But the LORD will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and that of Egypt; that no animal belonging to the Israelite's will die.” 

God was not happy!  He was about to show the world WHO He was not happy with by making a distinction between the Israelites (who desired to worship Him) and the Egyptians who had turned to false, pagan gods and ways.  Not only was Pharaoh calling himself god and encouraging the people of Egypt to worship all kinds of other pagan false gods too; he was preventing the ones who wanted to worship the REAL God from worshiping Him in the way that He had commanded.  Pharaoh was being very selfish with his arrogance!  

God had been very patient with Pharaoh up to this point.  The REAL God is never arrogant or selfish, but He always considers the love of His people and his anger was righteous in that His people were not being treated fair.  This wasn't all about physical slavery; it was also very much about religious freedom of choice.  It was more about spiritual slavery than physical slavery.

Pharaoh was putting himself and his false gods above The One True God and His people.  The commandments had not been written down in stone yet; but they were already God's ways.  "Thou shalt have no other God's before me" and "Thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy" were being severely violated in a million different ways.  God was going to make this very plain before everything was over in his dealing with Pharaoh and Egypt.  Are you beginning to see how Pharaoh's rise to power had simply been God allowing it to happen so that He could show the entire universe who God is?   

Once again God set a time for these things He had proclaimed to happen.  Pharaoh could have changed his mind in plenty of time to stop it.  He had at least 24 hours to think it over and change.  Moses told Pharaoh that the plague would come “tomorrow.”  Pharaoh, as usual did not relent.

The next day the LORD sent the plague and all the livestock in the fields of Egypt died.

Still Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not let the people go to worship God in the wilderness.

What does it mean that God sent the Egyptians a plague involving livestock?  Well, the Egyptians worshiped most forms of livestock.  Can you see the pattern here?  They thought many of these animals were sacred, but they did not even consider that The One True God was sacred.

Once the Persians were victorious in a great battle against the Egyptians simply because they drove their sacred animals in front of them into the battle field.  The Egyptians would not fight for fear of harming the sacred animals!  This gave the Persians an easy win.  You would think that battle alone might have changed their way of thinking.  It did not.  The Egyptians just kept right on worshiping their false gods.   Hathor was the Egyptian cow-headed god that protected cattle herds.   Apis was an Egyptian bull god.    

So as these pitiful Egyptians were sitting around with their hard-hearted king after they had finished burying an unbelievable amount of their dead livestock; God spoke to Moses and Aaron again.  

God told Aaron to take hands full of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh.  It was to become fine dust that would scatter over the whole land of Egypt, and soon festering boils would begin to break out on the people and the animals that were left throughout the land.  

Moses and Aaron did exactly as God had said, they stood in front of Pharaoh and Moses tossed the soot into the air and soon festering boils broke out on all the people and animals.  Even Pharaoh’s famous magicians were covered with boils and they could not serve in their pagan temples or stand in front of Moses because of the boils.  

This time the scriptures say that the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he would not listen to Moses and Aaron.  It becomes so apparent that God was using Pharaoh, probably because of his horrid choices in lifestyle and his arrogance in saying he was god over all gods, to prove a very important point.  I think I get it; do you?  I don't think Pharaoh was getting it though!

So there was Pharaoh with a nation full of people covered in boils and a country full of dead animals.  They were all sick and they had no meat for their tables (if they ate meat, they probably only ate certain animals that were not considered sacred) and they had lost all of their basic modes of transportation. 

 Even worse, the animals that they worshiped were dying in the streets.  Who was going to protect them now?   Why were their gods dying?

Pharaoh did not seem to care as much for the people as he did about having his own way and being the only one in control  He still was not able to humble himself before God and do as God had said to do. 

But why boils?  What did they have to do with pagan gods being worshiped?  Well - when God told Moses to lift his hands toward the heavens and scatter the ashes, God was probably thinking of those false sky gods they worshiped; Horis, Shu, Isis and Nut.  It was the custom of their priests to scatter ashes from sacrifices as a sign of blessing.  I guess the land of Egypt was symbolic of their sacrifices and Moses was mimicking their priests; but this did not bring blessings at all; it brought boils!  God was showing the REAL blessings of worshiping these false gods.  

God spoke to Moses again and told him to get up early the next morning and go confront Pharaoh once more and say to him; “This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews says:  'Let my people go, so that they may worship me, or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth.  For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth.,  But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.  You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go.  Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now. Give an order to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every person and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die.'"

I guess the only livestock that was left were chickens and pigs and any livestock that had not been out in the field when God had brought the plague on the other livestock earlier.  Of course the slaves were considered nothing less than livestock to the Egyptians.  So those officials who had learned to believe God brought all of their remaining livestock and their slaves inside.  Those who did not fear God did not worry about these new instructions to Pharaoh. 

Then the LORD said to Moses:  “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that the hail may fall all over Egypt – on people and on animals and on everything growing in the fields of Egypt."   

Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky and the LORD sent thunder and lightning and hail and the lightning flashed down to the ground.  It was the worst storm in Egypt since it had become a nation.  People and animals and all the vegetation were beat down into the ground by the pounding lightning and hail from this storm.  The flax and barley were destroyed, since the barley crop was almost ready to harvest in the fields and the flax was also already in bloom.  The wheat and spelt however, were not destroyed because they would not ripen until later in the year.   All the land and trees were stripped of their vegetation.  The goodness of the rich land was destroyed everywhere, except for the land of Goshen where God’s people were living.  They were safe from the storm and their crops were still in tact.  

Until now the desert land of Egypt had hardly known rain, much less hail or thunder and lightning.  They got their water for the land and crops from the river.  These Egyptians had probably never even seen hail or lightning.  Where were their sky gods who should be protecting them from such things falling from the sky?  Mim's party would not happen this year!  Would this open the eyes of Pharaoh? 

Mim was their false god of agriculture.  Before the coming of this plague the people  had been preparing for the annual festival for Mim where they offered sacrifices to him as their god of agriculture.  Where was he in all of this?  All of their ripening crops had been destroyed.  The Hebrews had not worshiped these Egyptian false gods and their crops were all still in place.  The Hebrews would have offerings to bring to their God when the time for their offerings came; if only Pharaoh would let them go out to do it.  Would this open Pharaoh's eyes?

For the first time, it did seem to have an affect on Pharaoh in which he recognized the One True God of the Hebrews.  When Pharaoh came out and saw the devastation to his land and his people he summoned Moses.  This time Pharaoh admitted that he had sinned.  He actually said to Moses and Aaron; “The LORD is in the right and I and my people are in the wrong.  Pray to the LORD, for we have had enough thunder and hail.  I will let you go; you don’t have to stay any longer.” 

What an amazing break-through!   

But Moses still wasn’t so sure that Pharaoh would actually keep his word.  God had been talking to Moses and He had told him how Pharaoh would react.    

So Moses told Pharaoh when he left the city he would spread out his hands toward the LORD in prayer; and the thunder would stop and there will be no more hail, all so Pharaoh could know that the earth is the LORD’S.  But he also told Pharaoh that he knew he and his officials still did not fear the LORD God. 

Nevertheless;  Moses went out of the city and spread out his hands toward the LORD and the thunder and hail soon stopped.  The rain no longer poured down on the land.  When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again.  He and his officials hardened their hearts and Pharaoh did not let the Israelites go; just as the LORD had said to Moses.

I found it interesting that Moses even had to leave the city where Pharaoh lived in order to be heard by God.  Apparently, God turns a deaf ear to cities that are ruled by pagans!   

The worship in ancient Egypt was mostly polytheistic.  To better understand the plagues of Egypt it is helpful to understand the false pagan gods that Egypt worshiped, then begin to look closer at what God was showing them and us through all of the plagues. 

On first glance the worship of Egypt seemed like a very chaotic and unorganized religion with many, many gods, and it actually started out that way; but an order seemed to evolve in all of it when their own (made up) version of the telling of the story of creation came forth.

 

In the Egyptian version of the creation story there was only one ocean at the beginning of time.  From that ocean rose a god named Ra, who represented the sun.  Apparently Ra was hatched either from a flower or an egg that rose from the ocean.  (There are different conflicting stories about this.)  When Ra appeared as the sun on the surface of the water he brought forth four children, who were also gods.  They were the males, Shu and Geb and the females,  Tefnut and Nut.  Shu and Tefnut became the atmosphere and they stood on Geb who became the earth and Geb raised up Nut who became the sky.  Ra ruled over all.  

Geb and Nut had two sons, Set and Osiris.   Then Geb and Nut had two daughters; Isis and Nephthys.  Osiris married his sister ( Isis) and succeeded Ra on the throne as king over all the earth.  Set hated his brother, Osiris and he killed him. (Counterfeit story similar to Cain and Abel in the Bible.) Isis, with the help of one named Anubis, embalmed the body of Osiris and because he had helped Isis with this task Anubis became known as the god of embalming the dead.   

Isis resurrected Osiris with her powerful charms and he became the god of the netherworld (the land of the dead.)  Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis later defeated Set and became the god of the earth.  

And so the outrageous counterfeit stories continue through the generations of many false gods.  From these stories came the nine divinities called enneads and the triad consisting of a divine mother, father and son.  Every local temple in Egypt possessed its own local ennead and triad.  Of course the greatest ennead was that of Ra and his children and grandchildren.  These were worshiped at Heliopolis, the center for sun worship.  

You are possibly beginning to see a lot of resemblance here to the order of how God destined Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be the patriarchs of The Great Family of God.  These Egyptian false gods were all fake counter-versions of the ones with the REAL power from the REAL God.  They were fakes made up as imitations of what God had truly ordained and created when He first created the earth and mankind.     

In the Egyptian triads you can see the perversion and counterfeit of the True Holy Family of God and the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  

Some of the local gods were taken from ideas of other foreign deities or patterned after the animal gods of prehistoric  Africa.  Eventually all of these fused into one big religious picture in Egypt.  Among the more famous false gods were:  Amon, Thoth, Ptah, Khnemu and Hapi.  The famous false goddesses were Hathor, Mut, Neit and Skehet.  To make matters worse, these deities were sometimes confused with human beings who had been glorified after death.  These false gods had the abilities to change from god to human to god and back to humans or animals; whatever was most convenient at the time to achieve their purposes.  

During the 5^th Dynasty the Pharaohs began to claim their divinity among all of these.  All of the Pharaoh’s were known as the sons of Ra.  Minor false gods and demons took on a more local form and were worshiped in the temples along with the other gods.  All of these gods were depicted with human torsos and human or animal heads.  If the head was an animal, the animal usually expressed the characteristics of that god.  For example, RA had the head of a hawk and a hawk was sacred to him because of its swift flight across the sky.  Hathor was the goddess of love and laughter and she had the head of a cow.  The sacred animals were venerated by the Egyptians because of the gods they were associated with or attached to.  

The animals themselves were not actually worshiped until the 26^th Dynasty.  Each of these pagan gods had their own symbol.  Ra had the sun as his sybol and Ra was always the most important and the most consistently worshiped god.  Ra worship eventually evolved into the status of a state religion which governed over the people in the land.  Ra fused with Amon at one point becoming Ra-Amon  and was noted as the supreme god of the land of Egypt during that time.  

The Egyptians believed that the amulets and statutes they made protected them from both real and imagined powers from the underworld, both in life and after death.  They put these small statues inside their tombs when they died,  They kept them with them for protection and the statues were to serve for them in the afterlife.  The Egyptians believed there would be fields to tend to in the afterlife, and their statues were there to help them with the undesirable part of that work which they would not want to do.  So the theory seemed to be that the more you had of these little gods; the better off you were in the afterlife    They believed these little statues would somehow magically come alive in the afterlife and perform their chores for them.

No wonder God was angry enough to send plagues!  He was actually very merciful to the people of Egypt.  It would have been much easier to just wipe them off the map.  But God put object lessons into each plague, hoping to teach the Egyptians that He was the Only True God of Heaven and Earth.  Hopefully, even though the Egyptians did not learn this lesson; we who are reviewing the story will.

If you know what to look for in the modern world today; you can see all of these things of idol worship and pagan worship still being carried out, just in un-obvious and subtle ways.  It is right under our noses every day, but we have been so conditioned to this over millions of years; just as the people of Egypt were.  We do not even notice what is happening in front of our very faces when we see these things.  Like in Egypt, they have become a part of the culture.  

There is lots of false worship and lots of fake religion going on in America and in many other nations.  Will God be as generous and as merciful to us as He was to the ancient Egyptians?  After all, they had no examples to teach them.  We had them and their stories as our example.  What excuses do we have to offer?  We have all seen and heard these object lessons over and over.  

If you have ever attended a Passover Seder; you should understand all of the mysteries behind the plagues.  It is a standard part of the telling of the Passover every year.  There is more to tell later about this subject; but for now it is hard enough just to consider what must be going through the mind of God when He looks down on earth today and searches to see if there is anyone similar to Moses, that would be willing to honor His name and be true to worship Him and Him alone.  

One greater than Moses has come!  His name is Jesus.  Have we even listened to Him?

Time will give us these answers.  Lord have mercy on us!   

AN APPLE A DAY (DAY 102) - DETOXING YOUR BODY

365 DAYS TO A HEALTHIER LIFESTYLE.

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

Dear friends; Have you made the 
1 Corinthians 6:19 commitment? 

Have you become increasingly aware of the fact that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives within you, whom you have received from God?   

Do you realize that you are not your own now? 

Are you eager, ready and willing to get started on a newer, healthier lifestyle?

If you have never thought this way before, it can be a bit overwhelming.  You might find yourself wondering exactly where to start.  Just begin to think of this physical journey that we have decided to take as being very similar to a spiritual journey.  What do you do when you want to clean up your life spiritually?  Most people start by looking inward and examining themselves.  They begin to consider all of the wrong “stuff” they have let creep into their spirit. 

When you have a spiritual problem you simply go to God and confess the problem.  Awareness is key.  If you are truly sincere, you humbly repent, turn around, and make a change.  You ask God to begin to remove all of the bad things in your spirit and to  cleanse you with the blood of Jesus.  God helps you to get ready to begin again with a clean, fresh new start.

Your physical body basically needs the same type of attention as your soul.  Sometimes you have to clean everything up from the inside out.  You remove the bad and toxic things that do not belong there, and then you get ready to turn a page with some new good habits for a fresh new start.  You begin to replace the bad with the good.

 

How on earth would you actually go about doing this with your physical body? 

You begin the process with a complete body detox.  

Just like your soul, your body can get full of all the wrong things.  Those things can do horrible damage to your health.  You might begin to feel sluggish.  You could become overweight.  You might experience some skin problems, some headaches or any other type of ache or pain; or you might even have some digestive issues.   These are all sure signs that it is time to cleanse your body.  It is time to detox! 

Just as you empty your life of sin and begin to fill your heart with the love of Jesus in order to cleanse and heal your soul from the inside out; detoxification of your physical body begins with a similar process of removing the unhealthy toxins and replacing them with the proper nutrients your body needs in order to grow and replenish your cells.  You start on the inside, and it takes a while for the progress to begin to show and work its way to the outside.  As you give your body the proper rest, while cleaning and nourishing your body from the inside, you will eventually begin to remove and eliminate any bad toxins and replace them with more healthy nutrients. 

When God forgives our sins he covers them, or blots them out of his book, by the atoning blood of Jesus.  The bad stuff is eliminated.  It goes away never to be remembered again; and something new and wonderful happens as God begins to replace our unhealthy sin nature with the perfect healthy blood of Jesus.  Just as Jesus is the answer for cleansing the spiritual blood of the body of Christ, there is also a way provided naturally by God for a physical cleansing of the blood flowing through our bodies.  This process is not hard or complicated, and it doesn’t involve a lot of medical visits to a doctor’s office or a lot of pills from a pharmacy.  This detoxification process is basically free and easy to do; but you have to decide you want to do it. 

Why wouldn’t anyone want to do something that would be helpful to their own personal well being?  I don’t know; but I guess just as in the spiritual life, the answers are different for everyone.  Just as people neglect to do their spiritual house-cleaning; they also often neglect to cleanse their physical temples.   

Leviticus 17:11 tells us that “the life of a creature is in the blood.”  Just as the cleansing and

inner healing process transpires in our souls when the precious blood of Jesus is applied in our lives; so too begins a physical process where we must cleanse and heal our physical blood in order to keep healthy things happening inside of our bodies.  This is done by detoxification.  Some of us have treated our bodies like garbage dumps by allowing many harmful substances to abide inside of our bodies.  When we remove the impurities from the blood that is found in the area of the liver where the toxins of our bodies go to be processed for elimination, we clean the blood in that area.  Toxins can also be  eliminated from the kidneys, intestines, lungs, lymph and skin.  If any of these systems are compromised and the toxins are not eliminated properly, it usually results in bad health.  This could be comparable to the un-confessed sin building up in our spiritual lives.  Both situations are very unhealthy and produce bad results.   

The body’s natural cleansing processes are activated in several ways.  We can bring healing into the situation by resting the often overworked organs of our bodies through the process of fasting for a certain set aside period of time. When we do not eat our digestive system gets to rest.  I highly recommend fasting at least one day a week.  It is a good way to rid your body of those unhealthy toxins that have built up over time.  Whether you are doing a spiritual fast or a physical fast or both, the results will always be beneficial.  If you are diabetic, suffer from a terminal or chronic disease, or pregnant; be sure to consult with your doctor before beginning a fast. Otherwise, this seems to be a God approved way for detoxification of the body.

We let our bodies rest and restore by fasting, and we also let our cells be rested and refreshed when we get a good night's sleep.  If you have been neglecting your sleep, your body may not be ridding itself of the toxins that can build up over time, because when you lose sleep, your cells lose their resting times and are less likely to stay healthy.  Be sure to get 8 hours of sleep each night.

We can also help detoxification to take place by stimulating the liver, intestines, kidneys and skin through the increased blood circulation that comes by exercise.   If you are wanting to detox, try to get in at least one hour of exercise every day.  Walk outside in the sunshine and increase your vitamin intake from the natural sun light.  A few times a week exercise hard enough and in such a way that makes your skin perspire.  That is your body’s natural way of eliminating toxic waste.  After you have exercised, go sit in a hot sauna and sweat some more.  It is good to open up the pores of the skin and let your skin breathe and rid itself of what doesn’t need to be there.  When you shower let the hot water run over you as hot as you can stand it for five minutes, then spend 30 seconds under solid cold water.  Do this three times in a row, then dry off and climb into bed and cover up; this helps your skin to detox as you rest. 

As you go through your day, stop every now and then and take deep long breathes of air and exhale slowly.  This helps to detoxify your lungs.   

We can also detox by refueling the body with healthy nutrients instead of toxins.  All of these things help our bodies to achieve a healthier state of detoxification.. 

Sometimes detoxification is the only way to address the needs of our body’s tiny little individual cells that are constantly changing and evolving according to what is happening and going on inside of us.  Just like God’s Holy Days that come around year after year and remind us to cleanse our souls; rest our souls; and rejuvenate our spirits; detoxing the physical body should also happen on a regular (at least yearly) basis.   It is a good check, whenever you hit certain days that remind you to purify your spiritual life; that you also give the same special attention to the purification of your physical body.  Both processes work together, and they both need to be tended to on a regular basis. 

If you have a serious or chronic disease, or if you are a nursing mother, you should be consulting your physician before you decide to do a body detox on your own.  Also keep in mind that detoxification for a child should be done only under a doctor’s care.  A child’s body is going through many different processes and a child’s needs are different than an adult’s needs.  However, If you are physically healthy, but just not feeling 100%; you should be okay to try any of these safe, natural body detox techniques that I mention in this article. 

Keep in mind, however, that I am simply a normal untrained person trying to maintain good health.  Anything that I tell you is based purely on my own personal experiences; and your body may be different and respond different than mine.  I am not a doctor, and do not claim to be a health expert; though I have done a lot of research on health for my own purposes.  Understand that I only offer these suggestions as a friend, not as a medical professional.  If you want to err on the side of caution, even if you are totally healthy; it wouldn’t hurt to run the things you are doing by your doctor to get his input; then if your doctor feels it is safe, make your decision to continue. 

Years ago, this discussion about the health benefits of detoxing the body would never have taken place.  It just simply would not have been necessary.  Why is that?  It is because; today we are living in a totally different world than those who lived just 10 or 15 years ago.  We are dealing with so many new health issues.  We now have to consider the possibility of foods being contaminated with GMO’s.  We have to deal with the effects of air pollution.  We must be noticing that there are hidden chemicals and pesticides in our processed foods and our household products.  Even going to a doctor can sometimes be problematic as we are living in a world full of people misusing prescribed drugs, both the patients and the doctors prescribing them can make terrible mistakes.  This is because the big pharmaceutical companies have come to be huge money makers and they often go to unethical lengths to keep their profits.   Also there are large and well established charities that started out righteously enough,fighting to cure diseases.  They were at one time very helpful organizations and they gained the trust of everyone.  Many of them, having existed for years now, seem to  have more employees making huge salaries for raising funds than doing research and finding cures.  The diseases have provided a constant flow of monetary funds for their cause and some of them do not even want to find a cure now because it threatens the security of their huge organizations and their livelihood.  We are living and trying to stay healthy in a very messed-up, upside down world.  

We have learned that a good way to start combating the unhealthy environment is by lightening up the toxins that we all are putting into your body every day.  Many of these toxins would be coming from alcohol, coffee, cigarettes, refined sugars, starchy foods and saturated fats.   If you are going to do a complete body detox, you need to leave these things off for the duration.  The one exception might be coffee, but only have half a cup a day instead of the usual overload that most people tend to consume and make sure you buy good organic coffee that is free of chemicals and pesticides.

In thinking of your skin and your lungs; it is healthier to change out any household and beauty products that we are currently purchasing and learn to use more all-natural chemical-free substitutes.  This would include soaps, shampoos, tooth paste, deodorants and any chemical-based household cleansers.  Most people are simply not aware of how many chemicals, poisons and toxins are contained in these manufactured products.  Many of them actually cause cancer and other diseases.  There are natural alternatives to all of these products, so you do not have to eliminate them, just change to something better..  You can still be clean, smell good, and have nice hair and sweet breath with the more natural substitutes.  Your house can still shine and sparkle like new, probably even better than before; but you simply must quit using all the products that give you cancer, arthritis, dementia and allergies!  It is very easy to do a google search that will give you plenty of do-it-yourself recipes for mixing and making safe, natural alternative products.  You will probably want to add washing powder and fabric softeners to that list also. You can easily mix or make these from your home using safe, natural ingredients that work just as well or better than the others you are buying at the store.  Getting these products out of your home will help to detox your skin and lungs.  Also adding some healthy green house plants into your decor will help the oxygen flow and keep more clean air inside your home.  Not only will you be detoxing your body – you will also be saving a lot of money that you have been spending at the store on expensive products that contain unsafe chemicals.

Put all of that money you save away, because you might need it for the next thing you need to do to get good detoxification results for you health.  You need to rid your life of stress.   Stress is on top of the list of causes for death these days.  Vacations are good!  Learn to take them as often as possible.  A change of pace is great for distressing your life.   Large amounts of stress hormones build up in your body and create toxins.  These hormones interact with your liver to cause you problems.  So, do a close examination your life.  Think about all that you do daily.  What is causing you stress and how can you eliminate those particular items?  Try creating positive emotional responses to the things that you cannot eliminate.  Find a way to make those unpleasant experiences more positive so that you do not dread them.  Try to turn something around in such a way that your reaction is not stressful.  Try reading, exercising, meditating, gardening, allowing more time for a favorite hobby.  Perhaps you might use journalism, painting, sculpture, singing or dancing to counteract the stressful hours of your day.  Try to get the stressful things over early and relax into the more enjoyable things by the end of your day so that you always go to bed happy.  Eliminate the stress that you can, and learn to control and weaken down the rest.

I would recommend that you start slowly with all of these things I am sharing for the detoxification of your body.  Do the first suggestion for seven days, notice how it affects your body, then move on adding the second suggestion for seven more days.  Notice how that second item affected your body and energy level.  Next, start the third thing and just keep on going until you have incorporated all the suggestions together into your daily routines.  By the time you have reached the last item on the list you will know what has affected you the most.  That may be your weakness; the thing you should monitor in your lifestyle in order to prevent more problems in the future.  Many people notice that several things are affecting them, and not just one or two items. Again, awareness is key.

When you have followed these suggestions for several weeks, add seven days into the plan in which you do not drink anything but water.  Get used to that, and try to drink mostly water from now on.  Most other drinks contain too much alcohol, too much sugar, too many chemicals, or too many calories.  Water is safe, yet even the wrong water has its problems.  Do the best you can with what you have to work with.  Get the cleanest most chemical-free water that you can find and only drink it from here on out.  You can get strips at the drug store to test the chemical and bacteria levels of your water.  Use filters on all of your drinking water in your house.  Make sure you are drinking the healthiest brand of bottled water when you are away from a filter. 

After you have had seven days of everything I’ve mentioned so far, you will need to begin to change your diet.  Eliminate the foods in your diet that are not fruits and vegetables.  If you do this for a few weeks it will help to detox your digestive system and eliminate any digestive problems that you might be facing.  Eat lots of fiber (fresh fruits are good for this) and try to drink about two quarts of fresh clean water every day.  This will cleanse your body of all the bad stuff and provide the much needed nutrients which give your cells the essentials for good health.  

Be especially attentive to including plenty of apples, asparagus, avocados, artichokes, cabbage, broccoli, kale, spinach and bananas and berries in your diet.  After you have eaten just fruits and vegetables for at least seven days, be sure to add some good spices to your cooking.  Read about the healing qualities found in spices.  You will be amazed!  Slowly begin to add some protein back into your diet by adding some lean meats that are grass fed (or naturally and not chemically fed) such as lean beef, chicken and fish once a week.  Make sure the fish is grown in wild waters and that they are not imported from China where they have been grown in filthy conditions and fed bad foods.  DO NOT EAT FRIED FOODS.  Either bake, sautee or boil all meats.  It is easy to do this by making every other day a day for all vegetable and fruit meals and every other day a day for one type of meat, such as chicken one day, lean beef another day and fish another day; with the fruit and vegetable days in between each meat day.  Try to incorporate liver into your meat eating at least once a month.  It is full of the nutrients your body needs to be replenished.  You can put your meats into a salad or mix them with other foods, it is not important to eat a large portion of meat each time, just be sure to get SOME protein.  If you do not wish to eat meat, substitute with beans and legumes.  Notice how this affects your body and which foods make you feel better and which foods make you feel worse.  Consume the ones that make you feel great more often.  Also, have eggs a few times a week.  Use dairy, but go easy on it.  Try to buy things that are naturally processed.  Eggs DO NOT raise your cholesterol as previously suspected, and in fact eggs can add to your health benefits when used wisely. Mix a little spinach or kale with your eggs, the combination will taste delicious and you will get extra nutrients.  It is fine also, to eat naturally processed butter.  Unlike what we have been told in the past, butter is actually good for you and will not clog your arteries. 

It is just as important to leave out the bad food sources as it is to put in the good nutrients.  No sugar.  No starches.  No bread products.  Leave out the biscuits and toast.  Leave out the pasta except on special occasions.  No rice.  No potatoes.  No fried foods. No margarine and no liquid fats.  No sugary soft drinks, especially diet drinks.  Diet soda is worse for you than drinking the real sugary soda. If you MUST fry in oil use pure extra virgin olive oil.  Never use any other cooking oil.  It is okay to use coconut oil though, and it actually is very tasty and has great nutrients.  Do not buy anymore pre-packaged foods.  Learn to make your own sauces from all natural ingredients in your kitchen.  NEVER eat Hines ketchup, it is full of toxins and sugar.  Make your own condiments and be aware of what is in each one.  If you need good healthy recipes; google!
     

Use plentiful amounts of spices in your recipes as they all have great healing factors built right in.  Spice things up with turmeric, garlic, onions, curry, cinnamon, ginger and black pepper.  These all have great healing properties and help your body to detox.  Use lots of lemon juice and apple cider vinegar.  Notice how you feel after you use certain spices and flavorings.  Realize the effect they have on your body and pick and chose the ones that seem to help you the most. .  Don’t be afraid to use them in abundance for adding variety and taste to your food sources. 

At this point it would also be good to add green tea to you daily routine.  Drink it hot in the mornings and flavor it with local unprocessed honey.  Unprocessed local honey is one of the best things you can add to your diet.  It contains many healing qualities and is wonderful for the digestive tract.  Add a spoonful of fresh lemon juice and a spoonful of apple cider vinegar along with a spoonful of honey to your green tea.  Make sure the tea is organic, otherwise it might contain unhealthy chemicals that would interfere with your detoxification process. 

Further cleanse your liver by adding sprinkles of ground dandelion root, burdock and milk thistle to your food and drinks. 

Find a good vitamin C tablet and take it daily.  

This may sound like too many suggestions to take in at once.  Go back to my original suggestion and just add one thing at a time until you have incorporated them all.  Give it all time to work.  In a few months your body will start to tell you how much better it feels!  If you can stay with these routines all the time, it is good for you.  If you can’t keep it up all the time, at least practice these detoxification routines for a few months each year in order to detoxify your body and get refreshed. 

So my dear friends, in closing this message on detoxification of the physical body, let us all begin to ask ourselves the right questions.  Have we devoted ourselves as holy temples to God through The Holy Spirit?  Are we habitations of God by the Spirit?  Are we spiritually-minded and physically ready to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit of God?  

Let us take heed not to grieve the holy Comforter.  Let us desire his gracious presence and the influences upon our hearts as He resides within our physical bodies.  Let us seek to live out our days with wisdom and to carry out the duties allotted to us, to the glory of God.

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."