God's Work with Planet Earth

This whole series of blog posts is dedicated to learning more about God by how He has worked with humans and our world.

In this post, we see a case where God’s purpose in bringing the ten plagues on Egypt was not only to convince the pharaoh to let His people leave, but He also proved that He is God and there is no other (Isaiah 46:9-10). He did this by causing very specific plagues that targeted and exposed specific Egyptian gods.

“…and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord.” Exodus 12:12

Who are the false gods?

If this idea is new to you, or it’s hard for you to swallow the idea of fallen angels playing false gods, lets consider some things. In the United States where I live, it’s hard for most people to believe in demons or fallen angels deceiving and influencing us. In Indonesia, where my wife grew up, they KNOW evil spirits are real and that they interact with humans. Those of us from western countries think of them as ignorantly superstitious, but they actually have a better understanding than we do.

If you don’t believe in the Bible as a historical record, none of what I’m laying out will convince you. But if you believe the Bible is reliable, then we can look at what the Bible says and understand what’s really going on, both then and now. Yes, even in our modern times, because…

“That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”?
It has already been in ancient times before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after.” Ecclesiastes 1:9-11

New generations forget or doubt what happened just two generations before. Demons deceived people into all kinds of horrible acts in the past, and they still do today. Where do people get the ideas to create hyper-addictive substances, weaponize viruses, and traffic human beings as commodities? Do people naturally become this wicked and evil in their hearts and minds? No, they are being influenced and inspired with these ideas. Same old deceptions, repackaged for a modern world.

The images of wood and stone that people worshipped were not gods, they were only symbols of real entities. These real entities are what some in our time call “non-human intelligence” or NHI. Here’s what the Bible says, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament:

“They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods; With abominations they provoked Him to anger. They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they did not know, to new gods, new arrivals that your fathers did not fear.” Deuteronomy 32:16-17

“Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons.” 1 Corinthians 10:20-21

In Deuteronomy 32, Moses was telling the Israelites these are “new gods” and “new arrivals” which came along after the God who created the world, Who their forefathers worshiped. And that these new gods are really demons. Revelation 12:7-12 explains how demons/fallen angels came to be in our world. I covered this in depth in the post “Origin of Sin”.

Paul was also saying that false gods are really demons. So they’re not fake or non-existent or imaginary, and they’re very real. But they’re not really gods, they are created beings who God made, who then rebelled, just as many humans rebel.

“But then, indeed, when you did not know God, you served those which by nature are not gods. But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage?” Galatians 4:8-9

• By nature, they’re not gods
• People under God’s influence do not follow them
• Compared to God, these spirits are “weak and beggarly”
• Those who follow and worship them are “in bondage”

Powers

When Moses got to Egypt and had an audience with the pharaoh, pharaoh’s magicians were able to duplicate Moses’ brother Aaron’s staff turning into a snake. They turned water in a bowl into blood, which was a much smaller scale than the entire Nile River. They also made some frogs appear. This is not magic, it is the power of fallen angels who pharaoh and his magicians worshiped as gods. So what’s going on here?

• Humans can invent, build, and drive cars, which animals cannot
• Angels can deliver visions and fly and have limited powers over nature (and probably many things I’m not aware of), which humans do not
• God can create life and entire worlds from nothing, which angels cannot

So when pharaoh’s magicians’ rods turned into snakes along side Aaron’s rod, these demons cannot make a dead wooden stick into a live snake, so it was an illusion. These illusions ended abruptly when Aaron’s rod/snake absorbed these illusions, and the magicians lost their rods into nothingness.

The message to pharaoh and his magicians was that their demon gods might be able to create an illusion, but God is the Creator of both humans and angels, and He could put a stop to it. This is recorded in Exodus 7:8-13

A plague for a god

Many pagan religions believe that gods are in nature, rather than one God creating all things which make up nature. God was disproving this belief, and exposing the impotence of Egyptian gods when compared to His power.

• 1. Waters and Nile River turned to blood
  • Khnum – guardian of the river’s source
  • Hapi – spirit of the Nile
  • Osiris – the Nile was his bloodstream
• 2. Infestation of frogs in every living space
  • Hapi – symbolized by a frog, involved in Egyptian fertility rites
  • Heket – symbolized by a frog, also related to fertility
• 3. Infestation of lice
  • Seb/Geb – the earth god
• 4. Swarms of flies
  • Uatchit – Fly goddess, guarding the Nile
• 5. Disease on the cattle
  • Ptah, Mnevis, Hathor, and Amon – Egyptian gods associated with bulls and cows.
• 6. Plague of boils
  • Sekhmet – goddess of epidemics
  • Imhotep – god of healing
• 7. Large hail mixed with fire
  • Nut – the sky goddess
  • Isis and Seth – Egyptian agricultural deities
  • Shu – the god of the atmosphere, weather, and sky.
• 8. Swarms of locusts
  • Serapia – the deity who was to protect Egypt from locusts.
• 9. Thick darkness, covering the land at midday
  • Ra, Amun-ra, Aten, Atum, and Horus, all related to the sun.
• 10. Death of the firstborn
  • Directed at the pharaoh himself, worshipped by his people as a god

While making way for the release of His people, God was also demonstrating to both the Israelites and the Egyptians that these false gods were impotent compared to Him, and powerless to do what the people worshiped them for.

God hardened the pharaoh’s heart?

The question here is: If God gave every human free will and freedom to choose, did he violate that principle by hardening pharaoh’s heart to the point that Egypt was literally destroyed by one disaster after another? Check out this sequence:

“And Pharaoh’s heart grew hard, and he did not heed them, as the Lord had said.” Exodus 7:13

“and Pharaoh’s heart grew hard, and he did not heed them, as the Lord had said.” Exodus 7:22

“But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and did not heed them, as the Lord had said.” Exodus 8:15

“Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart grew hard, and he did not heed them, just as the Lord had said.” Exodus 8:19

“But Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also; neither would he let the people go.” Exodus 8:32

“But the heart of Pharaoh became hard, and he did not let the people go.” Exodus 9:7

Now after the pharaoh has hardened his own heart no less than six times, we see a change in the wording:

“But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh; and he did not heed them” Exodus 9:12

“Now the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants, that I may show these signs of Mine before him, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son’s son the mighty things I have done in Egypt, and My signs which I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord.” Exodus 10:1-2

God knew how this particular pharaoh would react ahead of time, and He used it to accomplish His own purposes. Then after the pharaoh had hardened his own heart multiple times, God gave him what he wanted – full devotion to demons and absolute rejection of his Creator. Something similar will happen to many people at the end of this world:

“The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie,” 2 Thessalonians 2:9-11

We know that God is not willing that ANYONE would “perish” (the second death, permanent destruction) 2 Peter 3:9, so why would He “send strong delusion” on people?

God is not active in doing this, He’s passive. A God Who “is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5), and “Who cannot lie” (Titus 1:2) is not the source of the delusion/deception. Instead, once someone has made their choice to defy and reject Him, He steps back and allows Satan to do his work. We see this just two verses earlier in the same chapter:

“For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way.” 2 Thess. 2:7

• God exerts a restraining influence through His Spirit on people to limit evil and destruction in the world
• When people reject God, and there’s no hope of convicting them to repent, “He is taken out of the way”, and Satan brings delusion and deception.

This is similar to Romans 1:18-32, where people insist on rejecting God. How do they do this?

• They “suppress the truth in unrighteousness”
• God showed them evidence of His existence, and even “His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (His Creation/nature), yet they refuse to acknowledge Him
• “they worshiped and served the creature, rather than the Creator”
• “they did not like to retrain God in their knowledge”

So three times (verse 24, 26, 28) God “gave them up” or “gave them over” to evil and self-destructive behaviors.

While God appeals, nudges, calls people, He never forces Himself on anyone. He ultimately gives people what they want. If that is separation from the Source of light and life, to be engulfed in darkness and destruction, He allows it with tears in His eyes.