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Chapter 15—God’s Power Revealed
This chapter is based on
Exodus 5:1-12:28
.
Many years had the children of Israel been in servitude to the
Egyptians. Only a few families went down into Egypt, but they had
become a large multitude. And being surrounded with idolatry, many
of them had lost the knowledge of the true God and had forgotten
His law. And they united with the Egyptians in their worship of the
sun, moon, and stars, also of beasts and images, the work of men’s
hands.
Everything around the children of Israel was calculated to make
them forget the living God. Yet there were those among the Hebrews
who preserved the knowledge of the true God, the Maker of the
heavens and of the earth. They were grieved to see their children
daily witnessing, and even engaging in, the abominations of the
idolatrous people around them, and bowing down to Egyptian deities,
made of wood and stone, and offering sacrifice to these senseless
objects. The faithful were grieved, and in their distress they cried
unto the Lord for deliverance from the Egyptian yoke, that He would
bring them out of Egypt, where they might be rid of idolatry and the
corrupting influences which surrounded them.
But many of the Hebrews were content to remain in bondage
rather than to go to a new country and meet with the difficulties
attending such a journey. Therefore the Lord did not deliver them by
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the first display of His signs and wonders before Pharaoh. He over-
ruled events to more fully develop the tyrannical spirit of Pharaoh,
and that He might manifest His great power to the Egyptians, and
also before His people, to make them anxious to leave Egypt and
choose the service of God.
Although many of the Israelites had become corrupted by idola-
try, yet the faithful stood firm. They had not concealed their faith,
but openly acknowledged before the Egyptians that they served the
only true and living God. They rehearsed the evidences of God’s
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