Lesson 4: “The Plagues”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
Have you ever wondered about those Ten Plagues that God sent to Egypt before He led Israel out? How could God send such suffering on a whole nation? And what did it mean that God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart”—is that fair? And—would you know it if you were practicing idolatry?
We’ll see how Adventism ties these historical events to the great controversy and how it leverages these accounts to subtly establish Adventists in idolatry—only they redefine idolatry so the Adventists never see their own bondage.
This lesson covers the first nine plagues that God sent to Egypt as He rescued His people out of Egypt’s slavery.
Adventism teaches the plagues as signs from God designed to convince Pharaoh to release Israel to follow Moses out of the land to worship their God. On the surface, this analysis is correct—but it is only a surface understanding.
The lesson sets the stage for the plagues by using an old story to illustrate the Adventist perspective that Pharaoh needed persuasion to change his mind. The author says this in Saturday’s lesson:
A farmer was trying to get his donkey to move; the beast wouldn’t budge. So, the farmer took a thick branch and walloped it. He again spoke to the donkey, who then started moving. When someone asked the farmer why that worked, he replied, “Well, first you have to get its attention”…
Moses has been given his marching orders and goes to Pharaoh with God’s famous words, shalach et ami, which is, “Let My people go!”
Pharaoh, however, does not want to let God’s people go.…Thus, he was going to need some persuasion not only to get his attention but also to change his mind.
The bottom line, however, was not that Pharaoh was inattentive nor that God was trying to “change his mind”. The real issue was that God was revealing Himself to Egypt. He was showing Pharaoh—who himself was considered a god—as well as the whole nation that He was sovereign over all creation. He even had power over the Egyptians’ gods, and He used the symbols of their own gods to torture the Egyptians.
Even within the suffering of the plagues, God was showing Egypt that Yahweh, Israel’s God, was the God who had power over all. Even more, He protected His own people from the suffering Egypt experienced as their own gods were forced to reveal their true impotence and failed to protect the Egyptians.
Pharaoh’s Hardened Heart
Monday’s lesson addresses the perennial Adventist question: did God harden Pharaoh’s heart, or did Pharaoh harden his own heart? The lesson rightly states that nine times Scripture says God harder Pharaoh’s heart, and nine times it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.
Paul addresses this account in Romans 9 as well as he explains that God’s purposes are sovereign, and we are not to question His purposes but are to believe all the words of Scripture. We are to understand that when we encounter apparently contradictory statements in Scripture, both are true—and we are not to try to harmonize them in such a way that either one is diminished.
Monday’s lesson says:
Pharaoh had his free will—he could choose for or against God—and he decided against.
The lessons are obvious. We have been given the ability to choose between right and wrong, good and evil, obedience or disobedience. From Lucifer in heaven, to Adam and Eve in Eden, to Pharaoh in Egypt, and to us today—wherever we abide, we choose either life or death (Deut. 30:19).
This quote reveals Adventism’s worldview: each human is born with freewill which God respects, limiting Himself and His own power in order to permit His creatures to have ultimate authority over their own lives. Yet this perspective is not biblical.
Adventism does not believe that we are born literally dead in sin, unable in our natural state to choose to know or follow God. We are naturally unable to seek Him or to please Him (Romans 3:9–18; Ephesians 2:1–3). We must be drawn by the Father to know Jesus; we never have the natural ability to choose between good and evil, obedience or disobedience. As Jesus said,
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.”—John 6:44 LSB
We are not born onto a neutral playing field from which we choose the direction of our lives. Rather God reveals Himself to each person, and in some way which is not explained in Scripture, we make real choices to believe or not to believe when we encounter God’s revelation.
As for Pharaoh, we see in His story exactly this dynamic. He stubbornly refused to believe when Yahweh revealed Himself in Egypt. God took authority not only over the people of Egypt but over Egypt’s gods—and in the polytheistic worldview of Egypt, Pharaoh knew that the bloody Nile, the frogs, and the insects that engulfed all of Egypt’s life was the work of a God who had authority over his gods. Hapi was the god of the Nile; Heqet was the frog goddess, and the tiny gnats that infiltrated every crack of Egypt life-forms materialized out of a handful of dust—represented by Geb, the Egyptian god of the earth. Pharaoh knew that Israel’s God had taken control and was plunging Pharaoh and his kingdom into suffering neither he nor his magicians could stop.
Furthermore, in Exodus 8:22 we see that God protected His people from the plague of insect swarms. This protection is also stated for plagues number five, seven, and nine and likely also they were protected from the sixth and the eighth as well. God was demonstrating that His people were special to Him—and He could protect His people from the judgments He was bringing on Egypt. God was showing that He was sovereign over nature and the pagan gods, and He was protecting His own people. It was clear that Pharaoh couldn’t outmaneuver God!
Yet these plagues weren’t primarily to get Pharaoh to change his mind. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, uses the story of Pharaoh to illustrate God’s sovereignty and our submission to our Creator. In Romans 9:14–18 he quotes Exodus 9:16 and says this:
What shall we say then? Is there any unrighteousness with God? May it never be! For He says to Moses, “I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION.” So then it [does] not [depend] on the one who wills or the one who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, IN ORDER TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND IN ORDER THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH.” So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.—Romans 9:14–18 LSB
God’s purpose in dealing with Pharaoh in this way had a purpose: He was revealing Himself to the world—and not only in those days but forever in His eternal word. Never would anyone be able to say that Pharaoh released Israel from slavery; it would be forever known that God Himself had freed the nation exactly as He had promised Abraham that He would.
Pharaoh didn’t have a soft spot in his heart that convinced him to let the people go; God released Israel and took them out of Egypt by His mighty hand alone.
Clearly Pharaoh did have an unbelieving heart—but God used this cruel king’s unbelief as a backdrop that put God’s power on display. No Egyptian could ever say that their king released Israel. Only Israel’s God would ever receive the honor He was due. Only God could override the cruel tyranny and release His people. Only Yahweh could expose the powerlessness of Egypt’s gods.
Pharaoh and His Unguarded Heart
Wednesday’s lesson looks at the next three plagues—flies, livestock deaths, and boils—and Thursday’s lesson deals with the plagues of hail, locusts, and darkness.
The author again connects these plagues with various Egyptian gods and points out that for the first time, the Bible states that God protected Israel from experiencing these plagues. Yet he continues to portray Pharaoh as hard-hearted—which he was, of course—and challenges the reader in Wednesday’s lesson with this question: “What should this tell us about why we must guard our hearts?”
Again, this emphasis reveals Adventism’s false view of the nature of man. Asking an Adventist to draw a moral conclusion about guarding his or her own heart by using the hardened Pharaoh as an example misses the point.
A person who is not born again is still spiritually dead. Without knowing the true gospel of Jesus’ completed atonement and resurrection for our sin, attempting to guard one’s heart in order to please God is a helpless cause. From the Adventist perspective, drumming up guilt and conviction about guarding one’s heart is a doorway to anxiety and depression. Without knowing that the Lord Jesus has already done what is necessary for us to have life and peace, we drive ourselves deeper and deeper into despair by attempting to keep our thoughts and motives pure. Without the Lord, we cannot do any better than Pharaoh did in spite of good intentions.
It’s All About the Great Controversy
The Teachers Comments on page 52 bring us full circle to the great controversy worldview. Teachers are exhorted to teach these Egyptian plagues in the context of the great controversy. Here is what the author says on page 52:
Present these elements to your class in the setting of the great controversy— the spiritual battle between forces of good and evil, light and darkness, Christ and Satan, the living God and idols. This spiritual warfare began on earth in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve fell into sin. God promised a victorious outcome to this war so that we would not forever be prey to evil (Gen. 3:15). From its inception, the controversy has waged between those who worship the Creator Lord and those who worship creation in its various forms. Worship of the Creator liberates humanity and frees them from the bondage of sin. Worship of creation leads to the moral degradation of humanity, created in the image of God, and ends, ultimately, in their enslavement.
The Adventist “great controversy” has nothing to do at all with the plagues in Exodus. The Adventist “Jesus” is embroiled in an ongoing conflict with Satan in an effort to win human loyalty. If the humans can side with Jesus and learn to keep the law, they will help to prove to the universe that the law can be kept—as Jesus kept it—and that God is fair.
Yet this paradigm is blasphemy. God is sovereign, and Jesus did not come to earth to prove that the law can be kept. Rather He came to FULFILL the law. Satan is not in a battle with Jesus; Satan is a creature, and Jesus is God the Son, the creator of all things.
Yet even besides this intrusion of the Adventist great controversy worldview, there is an irony in this lesson. In its repetitive and even condescending attempts to warn the reader against hard hearts, self-deception, and even idolatry, the lesson misses the glaring reality: Adventism is married to a “golden calf”. The continual reminder of the great controversy and the warnings against idolatry are always, from an Adventist perspective, aimed at keeping the reader from ever questioning what Adventism calls “true worship”.
At all costs the Sabbath School lesson must reinforce the Adventist paradigm of seventh-day Sabbath sacredness and of the coming danger of a Sunday Law and of governmental prohibition of Sabbath-keeping. Even if “Sunday Law” is not mentioned, the warnings against idolatry and self-deception are always aimed at keeping Adventists true to their religion and loyal to the Sabbath. Look, for example, at this discussion question at the end of Friday’s lesson:
Dwell more on the question of why Pharaoh allowed himself to be so hardened that, in the face of what must have been the obvious and correct choice—Let the people go!—he still refused. How could someone become so self-deceived? What kind of warnings should we take from this for ourselves about how we can truly get so hardened in sin that we make utterly disastrous decisions when the correct decision and the right path have been right before us the whole time? What other Bible characters have made the same kind of error? Think, for example, of Judas.
This set of questions warning Adventists to fear questioning their beliefs and doubting their own reactions reveals that Adventism itself IS self-deceived. Even more, the warnings against idolatry throughout the lesson and the Teachers Comments is a thin veneer whitewashing Adventism’s own idolatry. Adventism teaches that true worship cannot occur unless one honors the seventh-day as an eternally holy entity demanding corporate worship of God on that day.
Adventists believe without question that the seventh-day Sabbath is intrinsically holy. They teach that even God observes the Sabbath, and EGW said that the saved will celebrate the Sabbath in heaven with Jesus.
The Bible NEVER says the Sabbath is intrinsically holy. Further, the quote above from the Teachers Comments warns again the “worship of creation” and says it leads to “moral degradation of humanity” and says its “great controversy” wages between “those who worship the creator Lord and those who worship creation in its various form”.
Here’s what they completely miss: the seventh day is a created entity. It is not eternal; it was not a holy thing before creation, nor is it part of heaven where God dwells. Time is part of the fabric of creation. The days and nights outlined in creation by a “morning and evening” formula are created periods of time. Hours are marked by the 24-hour rotation of the earth on its axis. They are entirely woven into the pattern of creation.
If the seventh day were eternally holy, it would have to have existed in heaven before God made anything. Further, if Jesus and we are supposed to keep Sabbath in heaven, that means that the Creator of all laws and powers and entities would be subject to a “law”. The Lawgiver would have to be subject to His own “law”.
If the Sabbath were eternally holy, then it would have to be a deity. Only God is holy, and only God is eternal. An eternal, righteous, holy God cannot be subject to a day! The God of creation who used His creation to plague the hard-hearted Egyptians while He set up a line of division between them and His own people who lived in the same land is not bound by one of His own creations: time!
This lesson’s warnings against idolatry and self-deception are arguments used to draw the reader’s attention away from the reality taught in Scripture
Dear Adventist, have you ever pondered what the Bible actually says about the Sabbath? Have you ever wondered why the New Testament contains no command to keep the seventh day—or any day? Have you ever wondered why Sabbath-breaking is never mentioned in the lists of sins outline for the church in the New Testament? There are sins listed in the New Testament that are never mentioned in the law: coarse jesting, arguing about the law, unforgiveness, lust, hatred, and more.
The sin of illegitimate worship is not about worshiping on a day. It is about not seeing the sovereign Lord God as the ONLY object of our loyalty and devotion. If we honor a day as a sign of correctly worshiping God—or if we honor a day as a means of identifying our God—we are worshiping an idol
Even if we call God Yahweh, even if we say He is the only God, we miss the mark and give ourselves to something else first if we require true worship to occur on a specific day.
The Sabbath was Israel’s sign of their covenant with God, their reminder that they rested one day in seven in His finished work on their behalf. Just as God finished His work after six days of creation, so Israel was to remember that God ceased His work on that seventh day—and they were to rest in their tents on the seventh day. They had to trust that God would work for them. He would protect their crops and flocks. He would provide food and increase. He would make them successful and prosperous beyond anything seen in the surrounding pagan nations. They were honoring the shadow of the Lord Jesus who was to come.
Today when we rest in Jesus’ finished work, when we see that we are by nature sinful and unable to serve Him no matter how hard we commit and try, when we throw ourselves on His mercy poured out in His blood on the cross for us and when He rose on the third day, shattering our curse of death—when we trust HIM—we pass at that moment out of death into life. We are born again by His gift of the Holy Spirit and we are never the same again. We have the Author of the Bible, the Creator living within us, and He teaches us to apply His word to our lives. He teaches us to worship God directly—never on a “holy” day, but always in our sanctified hearts as we honor our Creator on the basis of His shed blood.
Adventism cherishes idolatry at its core. It demands that its members consider the seventh day to be “holy” when only God is holy. Sabbath does not honor Christ; Christ fulfilled the shadows of the Sabbath.
Today we worship God face to face on the basis of Jesus’ finished work.
If you haven’t trusted yourself to His completed atonement and asked Him to forgive your sin and to make you His, I appeal to you: come to Him today. Ask Him to save you and to give you a new heart. Submit yourself to Him—and leave the bondage of the law, the tyranny of a day—and enter the freedom of true worship of the One True God from a heart that has been made new by trusting the Lamb who was slain. Believe today—and know the freedom of truly worshiping the One who died for you! †
This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
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