This evening from the seventh chapter of the book of Exodus, the first 13 verses. Exodus chapter 7, commencing with the first verse, reading through verse 13. For 430 years, the Hebrew people have been imprisoned The land of Egypt, more impoverished every year than they were the year before, so that there could be no hope of their leaving or escape. They had nowhere to go and no means to get there if they did have somewhere to go. No direction, no guidance. They had no power. They were an unempowered people. They were slaves, forced internships. forced labor. For 430 years, they were like that. And as each year went on, their condition became more and more intense. They were in more pain and in more agony and in more brutalization than they were the previous year. So as the burdens became more difficult and heavy for them, the more they groaned that they would be delivered There were those among them, of course, who felt that they would be far better off staying where they were than venturing out to some unknown place, led by an unseen god and fed by promises made by one they really didn't know. So there were always those who were the detractors, those who wished to stay, who wished to remain. slaves to their evil taskmasters. The world is like that really today when one stops to consider that here we are in the midst of, according to the scriptures, a crooked and perverse generation. A world which is at odds with anything that's godly and everything that's holy. A world which really has no love at all for things spiritual or things eternal. A world which is engaged in, engulfed in, and enslaved by sin. And it's a world which doesn't cry very much for her deliverance. But there are always some in it who do, even as there were some in the land who did. So there appears upon a scene a deliverer, a deliverer and his helper, really. The deliverer's name was Moses. The helper's name was his brother Aaron. Moses at the time, 83, 80 years old, his brother Aaron, 83. They appeared because God had told them to do so and had promised them that he would be with them, that he would put his words into their mouths and his power into their very beings. So here they were, these two men, sheep herders, really, slaves, and sheep herders were told by God to appear into the courts of Pharaoh, those wonderful, royal, magical places that most people only hear about but never see. When Moses and Aaron were told to go there, they, of course, resisted the very idea. Who am I, Moses said, that I should appear in the royal courts of the king of Egypt? And if I do appear there, what shall I do when I get there? And what shall I say, for I am slow of tongue and halting of speech? God said, take Aaron with you. He's not slow of tongue, nor is his speech halted. And I will put my words in his mouth, and I will put my power in you. And that's what happened. And so we're going to begin this evening by reading the first 13 verses, which is really the first supernatural event that occurred in Pharaoh's court. There will be many others. We'll talk about them this evening, for we are not going to cover in any student-like form the plagues of Egypt, at least most of the plagues of Egypt, but we will speak about them this evening. Lord said unto Moses, see I have made thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet. Thou shalt speak all that I command thee, and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh that he send the children of Israel out of his land. And I will harden Pharaoh's heart and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you that I may lay my hand upon Egypt and bring forth mine armies and my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among them. And Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded them, and so did they. And Moses was fourscore years old, and Aaron fourscore and three years old, when they spoke unto Pharaoh. And the Lord spoke unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, when Pharaoh shall speak unto you, saying, show a miracle for you, then thou shalt say unto Aaron, take thy rod and cast it before Pharaoh, and it shall become a serpent. And Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh, and they did as the Lord had commanded. And Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent. And then Pharaoh called also the wise men and the sorcerers, and now the magicians of Egypt. They also did in like manner with their enchantments. And they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents. But Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods, and he hardened Pharaoh's heart. that he hearken not unto them as the Lord had said. Let's pray. Father in our heaven, we thank you this evening for the delights of your word and for the occasion of the gathering of your church, this holy convocation. And I pray that you would now, as we are together, make it a time of purpose for us. Those who are here who are not saved, who have a hunger and a yearning for the righteousness of Christ and the hope of heaven, may this evening be the time that you would convict their hearts and plant in them faith, give to them life, and bring them into repentance to Christ. For those of us here who have named the name of Jesus Christ as our Savior and serve him as our Lord, May it be a time of enrichment and uplifting, a time of encouragement, a time of teaching, and a time of worship. I pray in Christ's name, amen. You ever hear of Janus and Jambres? That's the name of these two, or these enchanters, these magicians that did the snake number in Pharaoh's court. They are mentioned by name in 2 Timothy, the third chapter. In fact, it'd probably be worthwhile exercise for us to take a moment or two just to look at that portion of scripture to make sure that we have firmly implanted in our minds exactly what's going on here. So why don't you take a look at 2 Timothy, chapter 3. This morning, I read to you a passage of scripture which I said was a litany of the days in which we live. Well, this also is one, this portion of scripture in 2 Timothy chapter 3. Starting with the very first verse and reading through the ninth verse, we find that there are certain marks, distinctions, if you will, of what here is called perilous times, which are defined as the last days. And it says simply, this know also that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good. betrayers, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying the power of it from such turn away. For of this sort are they who creep into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away by lusts ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Janus and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith, but they shall proceed no further, for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was." So we have here the deceivers. They're named by name here as being forerunners of those who would appear in the latter days, those who would perform such enchantments as they did themselves. I'm going to speak to you a moment or two. about Satan, and about his power, and about his ability to deceive, and about his ability to oppose. First of all, let it be clearly understood that Satan is first a lion. The scriptures tell us plainly enough that the great opposer to our faith is Satan, and he will come at first in the form, or in the character, if you will, of a lion. Roaring, walking about, seeking whom he may devour. He tried that once, and he does as often as he can attempt to do that by direct and frontal persecution of the people of God. He did it with a modicum of success in the first century. Those of you who have any exposure to Roman history will realize and recognize, as well as having exposure to the New Testament, that first century, second century even, for that matter, Christians, but mostly first century, were horribly persecuted at the hands of Rome. They were opposed directly. So the result was, of course, that Satan not only did not succeed, but in fact, in the process of his persecution, enabled the early churches to become pure and to grow, not so much terribly in numbers, but in location. They were scattered about, and those churches that did exist were very, very spiritual, very determined, very godly places, and the reason why, of course, was that there were not very many false professors of Jesus Christ. Those who professed Jesus Christ were the real thing, because if you professed Jesus Christ, you were at risk for your life, and therefore you would not make an easy or a false profession for Jesus Christ, the result being, of course, that many believers did die. But others survived. Those who survived were sterling compared, I would say, to the kind of believers that we have in the main in the Christian movement today. But still, the fact is that when Satan did not succeed in his direct confrontation of persecution of believers, he then turned to what I consider to be a more successful tact. He became not in the character of a lion, but in the character of a serpent, cunning, deceptive, using the arts of enchantment rather than that of direct opposition. And that's the kind of work that Satan does among us today. That's why in the United States, or probably in the Western world, one would have to consider that since our lives are very comfortable with the civil freedoms that we have to worship, where we have no official opposition, or at least no official opposition by law, we are more prone to be attacked as Satan uses his deception than to be attacked directly. So Janus and Jambres are the forerunners really of the kind of folks that would exist in our time and in our days and performing the kind of arts that they performed, which are performed today, although probably today in a more, in a more subtle way. We, I suppose anything that's done often enough is no longer novel, right? I mean if you, if you If you had 10 bottle caps and you thought they were precious, and then all of a sudden you had 10 million of them, then those 10 wouldn't be precious anymore. I'll use the vernacular of my day when I was a kid. But the point is that whatever you have a few of and whatever is rare in the hands of others is of great value to you. But whatever there is an abundance of reduces its value, reduces its novelty. We have enchantments today. If my grandmother, who died in 1937, my paternal grandmother, should suddenly reappear today and sit in my living room or walk through my house and see someone pop something frozen into the microwave and nuke it for a minute and a half, and it came out cooked, She'd be astounded. If my grandmother, who died in 1937, should sit in my living room and watch me push a button from my chair and a colored picture come up on the screen with play acting on it, she'd be astounded. To her, that, no doubt, would be quite an enchantment. Not to me, nor to you, because we have been gradualized. We have had things. come into our lives and presented for our edification in a gradual way. First we had radio, motion pictures, infant television. Black and white, small screen. I remember I had a friend who had a television. We didn't have one. And very early, the store where he bought the television also sold big magnifying glasses to hang up over the front of the television to enlarge the picture. The picture was always fuzzy. It was black and white. But now we have these huge sets. Pretty soon you're going to have very high definition television where the characters on the screen will be so clearly defined that they will look like someone is right in the room with you. That's not too far down the road. I guess the point is this, that all of the kinds of things that we take for granted, many of the kinds of things that we take for granted, really would be for those who have never been exposed to them quite enchanting. And I choose television because it is the primary medium for some of the biggest anti-Christian, Christian enchanters in the world. Let me see if I can define that or explain that to you. I do not blush, nor do I hesitate to point out to you that anyone who appears to large audiences, whether it be by the electronic medium or through tent meetings, or in pulpits. Who makes claims to perform miracles and collects money in the process is an enchanter. Most of the miracles they claim to perform are bogus, but every once in a while, one comes along that's very hard to explain. And I would suggest to you the very hard to explain ones have an explanation that can only be reasoned by saying that the result or the process, I should say, that produced the result is a supernatural process. You have to understand that there are two sources of supernatural power, the lesser source and the omnipotent source. God's power is supernatural in the absolute. Satan's power is a supernatural, not in the absolute, but supernatural nonetheless. And that's what happened here. That's what happened in this text that we have before us. Here were Moses and Aaron throwing down rods that they carried in, and they became serpents, live snakes. They were six-foot rods. I imagine they were six-foot snakes. And the magicians came in and did the exact same thing. The only difference, if we'd read out a little farther, was that Aaron and Moses' snakes ate up the snakes of the Egyptians. But nevertheless, they did it. I read Schofield thinks that they walked in with snakes that were trained to be rigid, like rods. And when they threw them down, they became lithe and agile. I don't think so. I think they were real rods that became real snakes. They were enchanters. Satan is an enchanter, and he'll fool you if you let him. There's only one antidote to the enchantments of Satan, and that's the Word of God and knowing it. If you know the Word of God, you are not going to be taken in. by an imposter. I don't mean just know the books of the Bible and recite verses of scripture. I'm talking about knowing in your mind so that's brought into your heart so that your faith is strengthened and built up upon the knowledge of the word of God. That's the antidote. There are lots of people who know the Bible who are just as taken in by these imposters as people who are totally ignorant. Anyway. They had a leader named Pharaoh who loved it when they did this. We talked about the hardness of heart before, and just a warning about it. I wish everyone who has been exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and who continues to resist it would understand the danger of a progressive hardness of heart. Pharaoh's heart was hardened initially from an intellectual and economic perspective. He didn't want to lose this major asset of cheap labor. Because in the midst of a monumental national building program, building huge cities for his glory. And so it was an economic and intellectual hardness that caused him to not wish for the people to leave. But before it was all over, it was more than an economic and intellectual hardness of his heart. It was a genuine hardness against the display of the omnipotent power of heaven. So resistive was he to the displays of God's power that he would never, never, never yield. do it. And when the key occasions came when it seemed as though he would give in some, for example, after a plague or two, Pharaoh would say, call it off and I will let the people go just a little ways into the wilderness to worship, but not far. As soon as the plague was called off, he wouldn't even let them do that. That sort of parallels folks who hear the gospel, are touched by it for a tiny little while. They had some kind of an emotional movement upon it and then move away from it very rapidly again, so that it was as it had no effect upon them at all. And that's what happened to Pharaoh. Let's talk about these plagues for a few moments. The Egyptians matched Moses and Aaron's power. Their magicians did. Then there was the plague of the water turning to blood. The magicians of Egypt matched it once again, verse 22. There was a plague of frogs covering the land, and the magicians of Egypt matched it once again. And then there was the plague of gnats, or lice, which came up upon all living creatures. And the magicians of Egypt attempted to match it again, but could not. And that was the end of their display of power in their confrontation against the God of heaven. So for three occasions. The rods that turned to snakes, the water that turned to blood, and the plague of the frogs upon the land, the enchanters of Egypt were able to match it, at least in terms of producing or reproducing a like miracle or a like display of power. And then it was over. They could do no more. But there were many other plagues yet to come. There was the plague of flies, the plague of the dying cattle, the plague upon the cattle, the plague of boils and blains upon the flesh, plague of hail and fire from heaven, plague of locusts, which ate up every green thing that was left in the land, the plague of thick darkness, which was against their primary god of the Egyptians, the god named Ra, who was the sun god. And finally, there was the plague of the firstborn, the death of the firstborn in all the land. Just a moment or two now, if you'll indulge me, and we're probably going to run five minutes longer than I normally do. These plagues that I just mentioned, which take us, by the way, through the 10th chapter of Exodus, and save the 11th chapter for the ensuing chapters for the plague of the death of the firstborn, which includes the Passover, which we shall deal with separately. But these plagues were portentions of things to come. or tensions of the future, if you will, future even from our time. There are some exciting things which have occurred in the course of history within my lifetime, certainly within the past 100 years. In fact, some of the events which have occurred within the past 100 years, setting aside the technological advances that man has produced for himself, there have been political and social changes within the past 100 years which have great portent of other events. The modern Zionist movement is only about 100 years old. It's 100 years old. Think about it. But in that period of 100 years, there has been a world war, which set into motion events which caused the League of Nations to proclaim the land of Palestine a place called a homeland, a national Jewish homeland. That was in 1919. And that land was given as a protectorate mandate to the United Kingdom, the British Empire, who operated it until the end of World War II, after which they could no longer really continue to govern in Palestine because some unique things had happened in the meantime. World War II happened. The European Jews, almost entirely on the continent of Europe, were either murdered or moved. The murdered ones didn't go anywhere, of course, but the ones who moved certainly did. And they went to countries like Brazil, and Argentina, and Peru, and South America. They immigrated to Canada in as many numbers as they were allowed to come, and to the United States. They immigrated to Australia and to any other free nation of the world that would take them. But there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands surviving Jews from Europe who had no place to go at all except to Palestine. And as they went to Palestine, the die was inexorably cast so that the Jews would begin to outnumber the Palestinians in such numbers that the Palestinians would view them as a threat and guerrilla warfare ensued. Until 1948, when the United Nations mandated that the land be partitioned, this part for the Palestinians and this part for the Jews. The Jews took their part and they named it Israel, formed a government, passed laws which said that any Jew from anywhere in the world could migrate, immigrate into the nation of Israel, and would become a citizen subject to all the benefits of citizenship without delay. And they came. They came by the tens of thousands. Even today, with the demise of the Soviet Union, there are hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews immigrating or attempting to immigrate into the land of Israel. Why do I tell you this? I tell you this because I want to firmly establish in your own mind, in your own thinking, that where there was no nation of Israel less than 50 years ago, there is a nation of Israel today. And furthermore, I wish for you to be advised and to be aware that the nation of Israel which exists today for less than 50 years is the exact same nation of Israel that the word of God foretold 2,000, 2,500, 2,800, 3,200, 3,800 years ago would exist, right there where it is. Do you realize what the chances of that happening is on the basis of chance? The odds would be incalculable. The only explanation, of course, is that Israel as a nation is where she is because of a series of events which God himself ordained to take place in the affairs of men which would drive those Jews to that place when they went and cause them to do what they did when they got there and to be what they are now. That all that would happen Because there is yet a time coming called in the scriptures a time of Jacob's trouble. Israel will be sorely oppressed. I'll give you some references. You will find it an interesting study if you'd like to jot them down. Jeremiah 30, verses 5 through 8, it simply uses the expression a time of Jacob's trouble and describes the condition of the nation as being so oppressed. and so nearly overwhelmed that even the men would walk around holding their lower part of their abdomen as though they were pregnant, ready to deliver. They would be in such agony of soul and a great pain of heart. And they will cry unto the Lord, and he will hear them, and he will answer them according to Jeremiah 31, commencing with verse 18. God will command their oppressors to let them go, read Isaiah 43, 6. God will send two witnesses, as he did with Moses and Aaron, to work miracles before their enemies, as described in Revelation, the 11th chapter, verses 3 through 6. And their enemies will also perform miracles, which will match the miracles of the two witnesses that God will send for a period of time, Revelation 13 as well. God will execute sword judgments upon the world, according to Jeremiah 25, 15 and 16, And God will protect his own people as he did the Hebrew people from the plagues of Egypt. Revelation 7 and 12 and 14. I guess probably the greatest protection of all of God's people from those kinds of events which are described in the book of Revelation is the protection of his people being caught away in an event which is a one-time singular event which could happen at any moment for there's no prophecy yet to be fulfilled or to come to pass which we have nicknamed the rapture but which is the catching away of God's people from off this earth and why shouldn't he do it because awful times are coming and he has promised to deliver his people. And so we are told in the scriptures that in a moment, in a twinkling of the eye, at the last trump, at the trump of God, the dead shall be raised incorruptible and then we shall be caught up together with them to shout at a moment in a twinkling. So we are told that we are not to sorrow as others sorrow, but we are to have hope where the great calamities that are about to come upon the world, which are foretold in picture and type by the events of the plagues in Egypt, most surely will come. But God's people, who are looking and anticipating and expecting, shall be protected from them, or we shall escape them. Water will be turned into blood. Satanic frogs will appear. A plague of locusts will be sent. And God will send boils and blains and terrible hailstones and awful darkness. Through all of that, at the end of it all, the wicked shall be more hardened in heart against the God of heaven than they were before it began. Death will finally consume multitudes, and Israel will be delivered. Thus, history will repeat itself. It shall repeat the events of Egypt, only in far more intense form. Well, I tell you these things because if you're a child of God, you should be encouraged. that soon, very soon, Jesus shall come. Look up, look up. Your redemption draweth nigh. Hallelujah. Our Father in heaven, thank you for bringing to our attention these coming events, the events which are touching even our lifetime, and bring to bear in our minds and our hearts the urgency of our day, that we might walk acceptably before you and live our lives in such a manner that Jesus Christ will be seen in us. I pray in his name. Amen.