Dead Men Tell Tales

by Harry Rimmer

It is interesting to see that this old error is in no new guise, in the article referred to above. This is nothing new, it is just an original approach to the same old mess of Satanic whispering. Indeed, Paul warned us of the possibility of this very article and method in II Timothy 3:8, when he said:

Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.

He introduces the very age of Egyptian history, and the events connected with the Exodus in speaking thus of the false teachers of the apostate days that should precede the time of our Lord’s return. And lo! the event transpires in this year of grace, as the press of the twentieth century casts doubt upon the Ten Plagues in this subtle manner.

It is subtle. Also dishonest to the nth degree. Professing to accept the historicity of the events, the article then proceeds to demolish the credibility of the record, by ascribing all the plagues to natural forces, directed by the genius of a human being, namely, Moses. God is ruled out, the supernatural denied, and common sense prostituted to infidelity in a manner that the shallowest thinker could not countenance. For a man of medicine, or a scholar in any realm of science, to foster such a contemptible evasion of plain fact, passes understanding.

A few years ago it was customary for criticism to deny that these plagues ever happened. Classifying them among the reputed folklore of the Hebrews, and relegating them to the realm of the purely mythological, the critic calmly and boldly denied that they ever occurred at all. But these past years of research and study have so established the historicity of the record, that this procedure is no longer possible; so the new attack is made, on the basis of naturalism.

It is plainly stated that Moses himself brought about these plagues upon the Egyptians, and that he did so by the use of his own superior knowledge. In a word, he was a bacteriologist, three and a half thousand years before Pasteur! That in itself is a greater miracle than the plagues could ever have been! No microscope, no instruments of research, yet he not only anticipated the discoveries of Lister and Pasteur, but he also applied germ warfare to the redemption of Israel, and “bent the Egyptians to his will.”

More marvelous than all this, he did it by simply polluting the Nile River, the source of the life of Egypt. This of course was a simple task! The Nile is a mighty river. If we follow its course just from the First Cataract at Assuan to the mouth, it is over five hundred miles as the river twists and bends round and about.

Now all Moses had to do was to impregnate those five hundred miles of winding river with some deadly form of disease germs, that would affect the Egyptians but not the Israelites! Any nice germ would do! Of course, he had also to keep those five hundred miles of flowing stream polluted, in spite of the rushing current that swept fresh water down day by day! Let us not forget, that he did all this while Pharaoh was looking on: and that for seven days the condition continued, then to end as suddenly as it had begun. We should like to know something of his technique!

Then, after the river had cleared its waters, Moses boldly announced that the Lord would overrun the land with frogs! This was done, not as a result of a polluted river, but rather after the river was clear. Pollution with disease germs might have driven the frogs out of the river: but how did Moses get them to go back, as Pharaoh entreated him to do?

Most conveniently, the author of the above cited article does not mention how the lice were spread over the land by Moses! Did he personally catch them and spread them all around, or had he been breeding and storing them for years in advance? The flies may have increased in the rotting piles of frogs, but what kept this pest of flies out of the small section of Egypt called the Land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were? Given the conditions that caused the flies to breed, why did they refrain from the particular portion of the land where Moses and his people were camping?