Your Sons & Daughters Shall Prophesy - Prophetic Gifts Today In The New Testament Church

A Profile of the Ancient Hebrew Prophet

place the only true God made a spectacular entrance into human history. He came to set His people free and to raise His banner against every false deity that had corrupted mankind. For four hundred years the descendants of Jacob had dwelled in the land of Egypt, at first living royally as invited guests but finally held cap tive as a subjugated people. Gradually Egypt had forgotten Joseph and God's kindness to the nation through him, and a new Pharaoh came to the throne who knew nothing of the former days. With calculated inten sity Israel's captors increased the harsh burden of servitude until the peo ple cried out to their invisible God for help. The time for deliverance finally came, but more was involved than the wisest elder in Israel could imagine. The exodus was to far transcend a mere deliverance of oppressed slaves who needed help (although that was certainly included). God had waited until the religious crafts of Egypt had fallen to their nadir of perfected degradation; and the evil corruption of the tribal nations inhabiting the land of the Jordan, which had been prom ised Abraham, had plummeted to the depths of horrible heathen practices. Each nation, tribe and area had its polytheistic hierarchy of primary and secondary gods. Abominable deities took shape in hideous, idolatrous forms and degrading ceremonies that reduced humankind to the lowest forms of bestial depravity-and the people became like the objects of their worship (Psalm 115:8). Evil spirits, preying on the fallen inclinations of man, concocted these awful forms of religion to divert each human's focus from the true God to lifeless objects with sensual, immoral rituals. Men and women had degraded themselves to the lowest possible point. As the simmering caldron of Egypt's magical abominations (which some say was the graduate school of the day for such practices) was frothing to the overflow state, God met Moses in the Sinai wilderness and com missioned him to go and bring forth Israel from Egypt. Raised as a prince for forty years in the Egyptian society, Moses knew firsthand the rampant polytheistic system (with its profuse lexicon of terms and titles) that granted deification to nature, animals and even man. Ra, the sun god, was represented by a hawk. The river Nile was considered sacred. The leading deities were represented by bulls, cows, goats, crocodiles, apes, frogs, flies, serpents and vultures, and each had a sacred name, ritual, priesthood and temple. The Pharaohs were deified. That was the setting in Egypt when, in the wilderness, God said to Moses, "Go and set my people free!" The response of the frightened prophet-to-be was logical and appro priate for a man living in a world of gods galore. Overwhelmed by the startling appearance of the God of fire, Moses was keenly conscious that some name was necessary to distinguish this awesome "God almighty of

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