The Deliverer (10 page)
What a surprise.
T
HINGS ON THE
earth were quiet for the next few days, so I returned to my perch, continued my watch, and tried to guess what would happen next. I found myself wondering about Ramses.
“By now, he’s got to know he’s up against something stronger than he is. Why doesn’t he give it up? The consequences can only get worse the longer he holds out. What is he thinking?”
“Not only that,” I paced back and forth on my perch. “What’s up with God? Why does He keep sending Moses with ‘Tell Pharaoh this, and tell Pharaoh that’?” I couldn’t recall God ever before engaging His enemies in conversation. This messaging back and forth to Pharaoh through Moses looked like a negotiation for the release of the Hebrews, which made no sense because God doesn’t negotiate with anyone who isn’t a Hebrew and about to be sent out on some impossible scheme. Abraham came to mind.
Satan instigated mandatory daily debriefings from all of his hordes for as long as Moses and Aaron were in town. When I heard the report from the demon assigned to Pharaoh’s side, at least I got the answer to my first question about why Ramses didn’t simply give up the slaves.
“Does Ramses know what this is all about yet?” Satan asked.
“No, sir,” the demon answered. “I don’t give him time to think about it. I keep telling him that it’s all about him and Moses, nothing more. I remind him how Moses would have been the prince of Egypt, not him, if it hadn’t been for that murder years ago that drove Moses into hiding. I tell him that it’s obvious to everyone that Moses is back to take over. He thinks it’s a power struggle between two brothers with a little magic thrown in.”
Soon it was my turn before the evil inquisitor.
“Now you tell me what God will do next.”
I thought he was serious until I realized that the rest of the demonic corps was snickering. They were waiting for me to become flustered and say something silly as I usually did when I was nervous, and I was always nervous when Satan spoke to me. I gave what I thought was a good answer.
“He will send Pharaoh another message.”
“Ooooh
, so scary,” the horde began chiding me. “Big whoopee, a message to Pharaoh; we better worry now.”
They continued to make fun of me as if I were the village idiot whose sole purpose was to provide comic relief for their staff meeting. They kept on for a while until one of them realized that Satan wasn’t laughing. One by one, the snickering subsided as they saw the steely look in Satan’s eyes as he glared at me.
“Why did you say that?”
“Because that’s what He’s been doing. He sends Pharaoh a message warning him about what He’ll do if Pharaoh doesn’t let the Hebrews go, and then He does what He said. That’s all I meant.”
I desperately hoped Satan wouldn’t pursue this line of questioning. I just wanted to slink back to my perch, but Satan stared me down, reading my eyes and knowing there was something more.
“It may be all you
said
, but it isn’t all you
meant
, is it, imbecile?” The snickering started up again. In a rare burst of public vexation, I turned on the demonic crowd and railed at them.
“Does nothing about this look a little strange to any of you? Have you learned nothing at all about God? How many times has God ever negotiated with His enemies? Let me count them for you: none. Something big is happening under our collective noses, I tell you, and we have no idea what it is. And do you want to know why we can’t figure it out? It’s because He never does anything the same way twice. Do you seriously think you can outguess God? You’ve forgotten everything you ever knew of Him. You don’t remember how He thinks, so you can’t possibly know what the fight is about. You’re pathetic. We’re all pathetic.”
It was Satan himself who held them back from attacking me. Maybe he intended to personally destroy me.
“So God will send a message to Pharaoh, and then He will do what He threatens, and therein is supposed to be some cosmic mystery that you alone have figured out. Is that it?” Satan’s eyes narrowed as he glared at me.
I looked about the room at the seething demons and whispered my response for fear of triggering some celestial crisis if I actually said out loud what I now knew was true. I lowered my voice.
“It isn’t just about the Hebrews anymore.”
“Of course it is. It’s always about the Hebrews.” Satan slammed his claws down on a nearby rock and then turned toward me, daring me to tell him something about God he didn’t already know.
“We’ve made a wrong assumption. It isn’t just the Hebrews God cares about. He cares about the Egyptians as well.” I ducked down in case this revelation triggered a demonic fit.
Instead, the whole lot of them broke out in body-shaking laughter. Again, Satan was the only one who didn’t laugh.
“For a moment I thought you were serious,” he said, dismissing me with a swipe of his claw.
“No, think about it, sir. What does He say when He sends a message to Pharaoh? He says something like this: ‘Tell Pharaoh this, that, or the other
so that he will know that I am God.’
Why would God care whether or not Pharaoh knows He alone is God? Why would He care what Pharaoh or the Egyptians think about Him unless by realizing that He is God, they might repent and He would save them?”
“Impossible,” Satan roared and then stormed across the lair, knocking the other demons aside as he paced back and forth. “It’s only the Hebrews. It’s always been about the Hebrews. He doesn’t care about the rest of humanity.”
I ventured a bit further. “Technically speaking, sir, it’s about a people who will believe Him and obey Him. It just happens that Abraham’s descendents are the only ones who have done this—so far. It isn’t in the rule book that He only wants the Hebrews. It has just turned out that way. Clearly, He’s trying to get the attention of the Egyptians. Nothing else makes sense. He’s trying to give them a way out. And isn’t that His nature?”
“No, it’s not His nature,” Satan bellowed at me. “He can’t suddenly meddle in our strongholds just because He’s had a change of heart about the rest of mankind. Their sin is too deep. Their sin demands restitution; I’m entitled to that. Even if they repent, which we will not allow, they have to be paid for by blood, innocent blood of which there is none in all the earth. Those are the rules.”
Suddenly Satan stopped pacing and whirled around, facing the throng as if he had just realized some magnificent truth.
“In fact, why didn’t I think of this before? He can’t save the Hebrews without a blood payment. Just because they’re slaves doesn’t mean they’re innocent.” He turned to the demon who kept his records. “Check that out. I know I’m right. No blood, no restitution. Game over.”
I didn’t know how to answer because I’d never understood Satan’s fixation with the blood issue to start with. None of us knew what he meant when he went off on a blood tangent. I nodded my head like the rest and agreed that he was probably right. By now all of the other demons were nodding and chattering about how Satan was always right and how he had it over God. I took the opportunity to crawl out of the room and sneak back to my perch.
He’s not right,
I thought to myself.
I don’t know what it is, but God has a plan.
I wondered if Moses knew what it was.
I
WAS BEGINNING TO
think it would never end. How many ecological catastrophes could God come up with? He just kept going and going. Next, there was the plague that came upon all the livestock. With one exception, of course: none of the animals belonging to the Hebrews got sick. Pharaoh buckled a bit at the knees when this happened because nothing disrupts the economy and sends merchants into a panic like cattle, sheep, and goats dying all over the place. I thought Ramses might give it up on that one, but he didn’t.
Next were the boils. Ugly, oozing sores broke out on every single man, woman, and child in Egypt, except the Hebrews. By now, all the magicians and advisers were begging Pharaoh to make a deal with Moses.
It was then God summoned Moses and Aaron and gave them a verbatim message to take to Pharaoh. When I heard it, I knew that God was getting closer to making His point.
“Get up early in the morning, confront Pharaoh, and tell him I said, ‘Let My people go so that they may worship Me, or this time I will send the full force of My plagues against you so you will know that there is no one like Me in all the earth. By now, I could have stretched out My hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you My power and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’”
“I knew it! I knew it!”
I shouted as I jumped straight up in the air and missed my perch altogether, coming back down with a thud and landing on my bottom side. I got myself together and headed back to Satan’s lair to tell him how I’d been right all along. God wanted Ramses to repent so the Egyptians could be saved. They would declare that God alone is God, and it would spread over the entire world. I stopped short of take-off when I realized I had no proof of anything and still had no answer for that blood-for-sin detail. I thought it better to restrain my excitement and watch and see what would happen next.
It was a good thing I waited. Otherwise I would have missed hearing the very proof I was looking for. God continued His message to Pharaoh: “‘Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now. Bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter because the hail will fall on every man and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die.’”
There it was, shattering every assumption Satan held. God moved sovereignly, asked permission from no one, and offered the guilty-as-sin Egyptians a way out of judgment. God promised to save the animals belonging to the Egyptians, just like the animals belonging to the Hebrews, if only they would take one step toward Him by believing His word and hiding their livestock. Not one word about letting the Hebrews go so they could worship was in the deal.
When Moses delivered the word to Pharaoh, he did it in a loud voice so all the people in the neighborhood could hear what God was offering them. Those officials of Pharaoh who feared God couldn’t move fast enough to bring their slaves and their livestock inside. Others, in misguided loyalty to Pharaoh, ignored Moses and left their slaves and livestock in the field.
Satan did not take this news well at all.
“You’re making it up. I should cut your tongue out.” Satan threatened me as he dragged me by the tail to the edge of the second heaven to watch for himself what was about to happen on the earth.
When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, God sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. It was the worst storm Egypt had ever seen. Throughout the nation hail struck everything in the fields—both men and animals. It beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree. The only animals that remained alive belonged to the Egyptians who had obeyed God. The only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Hebrews were.
“NGYAAAAAGH!” Satan shrieked as he jumped up and down on my tail as if I’d caused this to happen. He only stopped because he wanted to hear what Pharaoh was about to say to Moses and Aaron.
“This time I have sinned. Your God is right, and I and my people are wrong. Pray for us, for we have had enough thunder and hail. I will let you go; you don’t have to stay any longer.”
Moses left Pharaoh and went out of the city. He spread out his hands toward God; the thunder and hail stopped, and the rain no longer poured down on the land.
Satan whirled about and stomped right in the middle of my already sore bottom side, flattening me into the floor as he sped back to his lair of demons. He was back in a flash, dragging one of the demon princes by the collar, and then he flung him over the rim of the second heaven toward the earth.
“Get Ramses back in line,” Satan yelled after the soaring demon. “Invalidate his repentance.”
I didn’t move a scale or a hoof. I lay there perfectly still, pretending to be unconscious, so I’m certain Satan was talking to himself and not to me when he spoke.
“No blood, no restitution. The repentance is meaningless without the shedding of blood,” he assured himself as he slouched away back to his den.
I continued to lie there thinking about what Satan had said.
No blood, no restitution.
Even though I’d never figured out what it meant, I remembered exactly how and when Satan began his obsession with blood. It went all the way back to the garden when God should have killed Adam and Eve for their sin. Instead, He killed an innocent animal and made clothes for His errant humans. Satan had never been the same since that happened. It’s like he knows some terrible secret he’s too afraid to share.
Satan, scared? Seems unlikely, doesn’t it? Especially when one remembers there’s nothing in heaven or Earth scarier than him. Of course he fears God, and he knows about the judgment that will come to him—to all of us—at some point in time. He knows he is sentenced to Tartaroo like the rest of us who rebelled; there’s no question about that. But he’s sort of resigned himself to the inevitable because he knows that judgment day won’t come until God either redeems the earth with His puny humans or cuts His losses and starts over with a better model. The day of sentencing could be pushed out to who knows how long—at least for as long as Satan holds the souls of humans.
As I peeled myself up from the floor, I thought more about it.
“The only thing in heaven or Earth that scares Satan, really scares him, is the idea of shedding innocent blood for sin. But why? Innocent people die all the time. What does he know that the rest of us don’t?”