Dialog

Did you know hail causes nearly $1 billion in damage to property and crops every year in the United States? That’s significantly more than the damage done by tornadoes. Fortunately, your chances of being killed by falling hail are much less than being struck by lightning; however, it does happen:

IN 1942 A BRITISH FOREST guard in Roopkund, India, made an alarming discovery. Some 16,000 feet above sea level, at the bottom of a small valley, was a frozen lake absolutely full of skeletons. That summer, ice melt revealed even more skeletal remains, floating in the water and lying haphazardly around the lake’s edges. Something horrible had happened here.
A National Geographic team set out to examine the bones in 2004. Besides dating the remains to around 850 AD, the team realized that everyone at the “Skeleton Lake” had died from blows to the head and shoulders caused by “blunt, round objects about the size of cricket balls.”
This eventually led the team to one conclusion: In 850 AD, this group of 200 some travelers was crossing this valley when they were caught in a sudden and severe hailstorm. An ancient folk song of the area describes a goddess so enraged at outsiders who defiled her mountain sanctuary that she rained death upon them with ice stones “as hard as iron.”[1]

The seventh of the ten plagues of the Exodus was a plague of hail:

“Behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now. Now therefore send, get your livestock and all that you have in the field into safe shelter, for every man and beast that is in the field and is not brought home will die when the hail falls on them.” Then whoever feared the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses, but whoever did not pay attention to the word of the LORD left his slaves and his livestock in the field … There was hail and fire flashing continually in the midst of the hail, very heavy hail, such as had never been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. The hail struck down everything that was in the field in all the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And the hail struck down every plant of the field and broke every tree of the field (Exodus 9:18 – 21; 24 – 25).

Why don’t people listen to warnings? Perhaps they feel like they know better. (“The recommended speed is 25, but I think I can take the curve at 50.”) Perhaps they aren’t paying attention. (The ever-present “distracted driving.”) Maybe they didn’t believe it. Friends, it’s time to get ready. There is a great day coming!

  [1] Downloaded from https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hail-no-an-account-of-the-worlds-biggest-deadliest-hailstorms March 29, 2021

Whereas the first five of the ten plagues of the Exodus affected the world around the Egyptians, the sixth plague, the plague of boils, affected them personally. The buzzing flies, annoying gnats, the death of the livestock, and their water turning into blood made life miserable. Still, those were things around them. This was different:

And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Take handfuls of soot from the kiln, and let Moses throw them in the air in the sight of Pharaoh. It shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt.” So they took soot from the kiln and stood before Pharaoh. And Moses threw it in the air, and it became boils breaking out in sores on man and beast. And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians. But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had spoken to Moses (Exodus 9:8 – 12).

The Egyptians worshiped many different gods, and commentators have been quick to correlate the other plagues with attacks on the various deities they worshiped. Ryken and Hughes observe:

The plague of boils was an attack on all the gods and goddesses that the Egyptians trusted for healing. When the Bible says that “the LORD … brought judgment on their gods” (Num. 33:4), it is speaking comprehensively. God defeated the entire pantheon of Egypt—Amon, Thoth, Imhotep, Sekhmet, and all the rest. Perhaps this explains why God sent such a variety of plagues on the Egyptians: He wanted to expose the impotence of their idolatry by causing each and every idol to fail in its area of special expertise. When the Egyptians were covered with painful, oozing sores, they discovered that their gods could not heal.

I am amazed at medical progress just in my short lifetime. Polio and smallpox have all but been eliminated. When faced with a pandemic, we race into the labs to develop new vaccines – and that’s a good thing, but we need to be careful to remember medicine has its limits. The gods and magicians of Pharaoh were powerless. Ryken and Hughes rightly remind us:

As a result of our advanced knowledge of the body and its various ailments, it is tempting to make medicine an object of faith. Most patients go to the hospital believing they will be cured. However, it doesn’t always work out that way. Doctors and nurses sometimes make mistakes. They don’t always make the right diagnosis or prescribe the right treatment. Besides, there is still no cure for death. So medicine has its limits.[1]

There is still a powerful place for prayer!

  [1] Ryken, P. G., & Hughes, R. K. (2005). Exodus: saved for God’s glory (p. 272). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

The fifth of the ten plagues of the Exodus was the death of the Egyptian livestock. The Egyptian animals died, and the Israeli animals did not. Moses and Aaron were not required to do anything. They didn’t strike out with their staves. This was an act of God alone. Moses was only required to announce it. It came directly from the Lord. Likewise, Pharaoh didn’t repent or ask Moses to intervene on his behalf. All Pharaoh did was investigate:

“And Pharaoh sent, and behold, not one of the livestock of Israel was dead” (Exodus 9:7).

It has been my experience that once people have made up their minds, nothing will sway their hard hearts. They may call for “proof” – “If God exists, let Him strike me down!” – but even evidence won’t change their minds. “Don’t confuse me with the facts!”

In November 1945, Advertising and Selling magazine published an article by Roy S. Durstine entitled, “Don’t Confuse Me with the Facts.” He reported on a meeting between the advertising executives and a client:

A group from the agency had just finished its presentation of a market survey. The findings were conclusive—clearly showing that the policies being followed by the client could lead only to disappointment and perhaps disaster.

Despite the facts given in the presentation, the client had no desire to change the strategy that had been previously selected.

“I still think we’ll go along as we have been doing.”

“But how can you say that in the face of this evidence?” protested the agency man.

The client stared at the presentation, deep in thought. At last, he reached for a cigarette and said softly:

“Don’t confuse me with facts!”

But the client wasn’t the first to make that claim. Thousands of years before, Plato said, “I’m trying to think, don’t confuse me with the facts!” But most famously:

During the Watergate Hearings in August 1974, the pro-Nixon Representative from Indiana, Earl Landgrebe (in)famously retorted, “Don’t confuse me with the facts; my mind’s made up.” He went on to say, “I’m going to stick with my President even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.” The next day Nixon resigned…and a few months later, Landgrebe was voted out of office.[1]

Pharaoh knew the Egyptian livestock were dead. Pharaoh knew the Lord was behind it, “But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go” (Exodus 9:7).

That’s the curse of a hard heart.

  [1] Downloaded from https://utahavalanchecenter.org/blog/16319 on March 28, 2021.

Fear of Flies

The last thing a kayaker does before pushing away from the shore to face white water is seal himself in his boat with a “spray skirt.” It wraps tightly around the rim of the cockpit and keeps the foam and spray on the outside of the boat. John, my Army buddy, was a great kayaker, but I remember how one day, he sealed himself in, braced hard in the water with his paddle, and pulled into the middle of a raging stream. Then suddenly, he sat bolt upright, dropped his precious paddle, and began pounding on the deck with his fists. When he sealed his spray skirt, he sealed a vicious grey fly inside. In the dark, the bug began to lunch on John’s exposed legs! I can still hear John screaming as his boat slowly turned upside down! Then it was silent save the roar of the river as his overturned boat was carried downstream, bouncing off the rocks.

That was a single biting fly. Can you imagine swarms of the little devils?

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh, as he goes out to the water, and say to him, thus says the Lord, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. Or else, if you will not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants and your people, and into your houses (Exodus 8:20, 21).

I don’t like flies. I don’t think anyone enjoys a swarm of noxious flies swarming around them, whether they are biting flies or not. Can you picture them in your eyes, in your nose, and your mouth? It was too much for Pharaoh too. This time, he agrees to let the Israelites go into the wilderness to worship the Lord, but as soon as the flies were gone, so was Pharaoh’s promise. He didn’t keep his promise.

Sometimes we’re the same way. When times are tough, we turn to the Lord and beg for help, but when He answers our prayers, we conveniently forget. Perhaps, today, we should spend some time remembering – and thanking – the Lord for all of His blessings?

The third plague happened when Aaron struck the earth with his staff, and the dust became a swarm of “gnats,” but what are gnats? The Hebrew word doesn’t help us very much. It’s only found here in Exodus 8 and Psalms 105:31, which is referring to this event. The word refers to tiny two-winged insects. They could be either gnats or mosquitoes. (Although the American Standard Version, King James Version, New King James Version, and English Revised Version translate it as “lice”! The New English Bible, for some reason, has “maggots.”). The notable point of this plague is that the Egyptian magicians couldn’t reproduce it with their trickery. I like what D.K. Stuart says about this event:

What is notably different about the third plague is the failure of the magicians. They had been able to make it look as if they could change water into blood and produce frogs by their magical arts. But what magician has ever done a trick with trained mosquitoes?[1]

Let’s reread the text:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt.’” And they did so. Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt. The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man and beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said (Exodus 8:16–19).

Whether you picture gnats, mosquitoes, lice, or maggots, the effect is the same. It’s not pretty! I would have to agree with the magicians, “This is the finger of God.” What I can’t understand is Pharaoh’s reaction. He “hardened” his heart. He didn’t even ask for this plague to be lifted!

Sometimes we turn a blind eye to sin. Perhaps we have become so accustomed to it, we no longer even see it, or, worse, we no longer care. Have we learned to live with the bugs?

  [1] Stuart, D. K. (2006). Exodus (Vol. 2, p. 211). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

As a little boy, the second plague was my favorite:

Thus says the LORD, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs. The Nile shall swarm with frogs that shall come up into your house and into your bedroom and on your bed and into the houses of your servants and your people, and into your ovens and your kneading bowls. The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your servants” (Exodus 8:1 – 4).

Can you imagine? Frogs in the living room. Frogs in the bedroom. Pull back the sheets and “ribbet” – frogs in your bed. Look in the mixing bowl: frogs. Look in the oven: frogs! Frogs everywhere!

Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “Plead with the LORD to take away the frogs from me and from my people, and I will let the people go to sacrifice to the LORD” (Exodus 8:8).

The amazing thing for me comes next. When Moses asked Pharaoh, “When?” (verse 9), Pharaoh replied, “Tomorrow” (verse 10). It was the same as saying, “Let me spend one more night with frogs on my pillow.” Why would he do such a thing? On the other hand, when someone has a toothache, and you suggest, “Let’s go to the dentist!” How often have you heard them reply, “It’s not that bad”?

Likewise, I have always been amazed at the end of a Bible study, when someone is ready to be baptized – to be cleansed from their sins – and they say, “Let’s wait until Sunday.”

I don’t understand. In the case of toothaches, frogs, and sin, “Why wait?”

There are two aisles in our small-town grocery store that are devoted to drinks. The shelves are weighed down with Coke and Pepsi products. Diet drinks, power drinks, flavored drinks, vitamin water, bottled water, distilled water – the variety is amazing. However, there is still nothing as refreshing as drinking cold, clear water right from the stream. Perhaps those days are gone. “Beaver Fever” and pollution have ruined those sources of refreshment, but I remember canoeing in Arkansas on a summer day. It was hot work, but all you had to do was lean over the side and drink your fill from the river. I remember countless times drinking from the streams that sprang directly from a snowfield.

Water is essential to life. Scientists tell us we are made up of mostly water. Without it, we would die in a matter of days.

Now turn your imagination to ancient Egypt: the land of the Nile. For the first of the Ten Plagues, Moses struck the river in front of Pharaoh with his staff, and the water turned into blood. The fish died. The water stank and no one could drink from it. Can you imagine the children returning to their mothers with a bucket of blood? Can you see the people rushing to the riverbank and then pulling back in horror? “What has happened?” But “Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened” (Exodus 7:22). In desperation, for the next seven days, the people dug for water. That gave them enough time to change the question from “What has happened?” to “Why has this happened?” That is a far more important question for us to ask. Think about it. “Why are these things happening to me?”

Christianity is very attractive. Did you know going to church is good for your health? Philip Yancy offers the following list of advantages:

• Regular church attendees live longer.
• Religion reduces the incidence of heart attacks, arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, and hypertension.
• Religious people are less likely to abuse alcohol and far less likely to use illicit drugs.
• Prison inmates who make a religious commitment are less likely than their counterparts to return to jail.
• Marital satisfaction and overall well-being tend to increase with church attendance.
• Depression rates decline.
• Religious commitment offers one protection against the nation’s greatest health problem — divorce.
• A Redbook magazine survey said that married people who were religious had a whole lot more fun in bed than those who were not.

That all sounds pretty good to modern ears, but the most important thing is missing from this list, and it is absent from most people’s concerns. What was it about Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost that persuaded three thousand people to beg for baptism? It wasn’t their concern about “heart attacks, arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, and hypertension,” or even their desire to have “a whole lot more fun in bed.”

Listen to his conclusion. It has three parts: “Let all the house of Israel, therefore, know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” First, there is a God. Second, Jesus is “both Lord and Christ,” and, finally, Jesus died for our sins. Join me. How can we make that message clear in 2021?

Danny Simpson of Ottawa, Canada, made two tragic mistakes in 1990. Desperate for money, Simpson decided to rob a bank. He visited the bank every day for a week to plan his hold up, and then, the night before, Danny had dinner with his parents. While mom and dad were cleaning up the dishes, he slipped into his parent’s bedroom and took the 45-caliber pistol from the drawer in the nightstand beside his father’s bed.

The next day, Simpson made off with two bags of cash worth over $6,000 from the bank. When the Mounties reviewed the surveillance tapes, they quickly identified Simpson as a “frequent visitor” and made the arrest.

Danny Simpson made two big mistakes. The first was robbing a bank, and the second was using his father’s pistol. While Simpson stole $6,000 from the bank, his father’s gun was a very rare 1918 .45-caliber Colt semi-automatic made by the Ross Rifle Company valued at over $100,000! The pistol went to a Canadian museum, and Simpson went to jail.

As Christians, we might desire the gifts someone else has: their respect, ability to teach, or sing, but God has given each one of us unique skills (Romans 12:6-8) that make us special. What’s your gift?

When people learn I’m a mountaineer, they often ask, “Why? Are you nuts?” Of course, the answer is “Yes,” but there are some other reasons why people climb mountains. There are over 50 peaks in Colorado, over 14,000 feet high. One of them, near Buena Vista, where I was a youth minister, is Mt. Antero. Every year different gem companies send young people to the summit of Mt. Antero on a quest to find Aquamarine – the stone the Bible calls “Jacinth” (Revelation 21:20). Jacinth is one of the foundation stones of the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem.

When I reached the summit many years ago, I met a number of these young gemologists. They were excited to put down their shovels and picks and show me their treasures. Their aquamarine crystals were light blue, like the waters of the Mediterranean Ocean. In the ancient world, travelers believed that they had the power to protect their owners against shipwreck because they looked like the ocean.

Another interesting stone from the walls of heaven is amethyst. I think they are beautiful. Amethyst is a violet variety of quartz. In Greek, a- means “not,” and methysko means drunken. This refers to the Greek’s belief the stone protected the owner from drunkenness. Archaeologists have found many carved drinking vessels made from amethyst in hopes it would guard the owners against intoxication, but why is it a foundation stone? Perhaps because sobriety is a solid virtue.

Finally, have you wondered why diamonds aren’t included in the biblical list? According to the New Bible Dictionary:

The modern diamond was probably unknown in OT times, the first certain reference to it apparently being in Manilius (1st century AD).

The list of stones that make up the foundation of the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem is interesting, but the gates are what amaze me: “And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl” (Revelation 21:21). We’ll talk about biblical pearls in another article, but just imagine the giant oysters that made them! Put one of those in your Thanksgiving stuffing!