Foreshadowing Now

So I just watched "The Prince of Egypt" all the way through for the first time in years. The animation was brilliant, the acting was intense, the music gave me chills (Hans Zimmer is amazing), and the story...

Wow. The story. I cried.

For years, people have referred to God as a storyteller -- The Storyteller. His story is the best kind: An epic tale with a beginning, a middle, and no end -- we literally just live happily ever after. For eternity. Eternal bliss. Happiness. Joy. Peace. Love. Forever. It's an idea we as humans can hardly wrap our imaginations around. In our minds, everything must have an end. At the end of every day, we go to sleep. At the end if every life, we die. But this... This has no end. At the "end" of this day, we won't go to sleep. We won't even be tired.

The true meaning of "Happily Ever After".

When I learned how to write stories in sixth grade reading/English, I was taught about a whole lot of stuff that I don't remember -- I'm pretty sure one of them was that you should never use the word "stuff". But one of them that I've always remembered is "foreshadowing".

Foreshadowing is when something happens or someone says something at the beginning of the story that hints at what will come later. For instance, Ethan Hunt talking to Jim Phelps in "Mission Impossible". The MIF agents are planning their mission. Ethan and Jim are old friends, sharing a comfortable relationship after years of going on missions together.

ETHAN: "We missed you in Kiev, Jim."

JIM: "Missed you too."

JACK: "You on another one of your kushy recruiting jobs again?"

ETHAN: "Yeah, where'd they put you up this time? The Plaza?"

JIM: (smirks, rolls eyes) "Drake Hotel. Chicago."

Foreshadowing! By hearing those five lines, you are given a hint of what is to come later in the story. It's the sign of a talented author -- the storyteller's way of winking at us and saying, "Hey, did you catch that?" And God, being the most talented author of them all, does it extremely often.

The story of Moses is a real-life foreshadowing. What happens to Moses on a physical level is nearly the exact same thing that happened to another Jewish man generations and generations later on a Spiritual level -- only, while Moses' story began in a basket on a river, this man's began in a manger in a stable.

Let's start with Moses' story. The Israelites have been in brutal slavery to the Egyptians for years. The Egyptians think they've pretty much got them beat -- except that the Israelites have hit what you might call a populational growth-spurt. They've gotten so numerous that the Pharoah is afraid the they might rise up against the Egyptians -- and win. So what does Pharoah do? He kills any Israeli son under a year old. After all, they're only slaves.

It works -- almost. Every boy is killed, except one who, we learn quickly, has some very brave, clever women in his family. His mother manages to sneak him past the Egyptian soldiers in a reed basket, then sets him afloat in the Nile River, praying that God will keep him safe.

And He does. Somehow, this basket made of grass makes it down the river, surviving the dangers of the Nile: crocodiles, hippos, ships, fishermen, being bashed against rocks. The baby inside remains, not only alive, but completely whole -- no small feat -- and then, as if that weren't enough, it comes to rest RIGHT OUTSIDE THE PHAROAH'S PALACE. Where THE PHAROAH'S WIFE IS BATHING IN THE RIVER. AND SHE DECIDES TO ADOPT HIM RATHER THAN KILL HIM, EVEN THOUGH HE'S AN ISRAELITE. AND -- get this -- SHE ALLOWS HIS REAL MOTHER TO ACT AS HIS WET-NURSE.

What are the odds? Odds got nothin' to do with it, hon. God's hand is already in this kid's life, and he's not even a year old yet.

So Moses grows up, as the title of the movie suggests, like a Prince of Egypt. Servants at his call, slaves building a kingdom for him and his brother, Ramses, the future ruler of Egypt. It's a good, easy, fun life, and Moses never questions it -- that is, until he gets older.

As Moses grows up, he begins to realize his true heritage -- that he isn't really the Prince of Egypt, but a slave by birth -- that the slaves he works to death every day are his family. And one day it becomes too much. He sees an Egyptian soldier beating an Israeli slave, and kills the Egyptian soldier. Horrified at what he has done and at what the punishment for murder might be, he flees the country.

While he is on the run, he is accepted by the Mideonites -- other Jews who are blessed to not live in slavery. He joins them, takes a job, and even marries one of their daughters, Zipporah. It's not an easy life -- really, for the first time he gets a taste of hard work -- but it's good, and it's comfortable. He thinks he'll settle down for a while, raise a family. That would be comfortable.

But God is not a comfortable God, and He has other ideas. One day Moses stumbles across a burning bush. Now that's not so weird. But the bush is on fire -- and not really burning. He touches the fire, and it doesn't hurt his hand. And then he hears a voice, telling him to take off his shoes because he stands on Holy Ground. All that, yeah, it's pretty weird.

Of course, it's God. God tells him that He has heard the cries of the Israelites, His chosen people, and He is sending Moses to help them. Of course, Moses could choose not to go -- he has plenty of good excuses. He isn't a good public speaker (he stutters), he is just one man, and -- oh yeah, and they'll probably bring him in for murder. But Moses knows that God had chosen him for this job, and he's no coward. So he goes. That's one of the coolest parts for me. I don't know if I would have gone. I'd like to think that I would have.

So Moses gets to Egypt and pleads with Ramses to let His people go. Ramses, being a stubborn-hearted pharoah, refuses. Multiple times. And Moses never gives up. He keeps trying. Through him, God performs miracle after miracle, sends plague after plague.

This is the part where it starts to look a bit like a horror story -- proof that God is not some pale, skinny, red-headed/blond wimp who sits back and observes the world. He can be scary. The Sea becomes the Red Sea, as the water turns to blood. Yes, actual blood. I know the movie makes it look like water with red food-coloring in it, but it was actually blood. Imagine turning on your shower in the morning, and instead of nice hot water blood comes pouring down on you. That's how the Egyptians feel. People are attacked in their beds by millions of bugs, livestock starves, frogs leap from the waters by the billions, and then everything goes dark. And one day, the Egyptians wake up to the most horrifying thing of all.

God tells Moses that to save the Israelites from the last plague, they have to slaughter a lamb, and paint around their doors with its blood. (They had to do a lot more than that, too, like eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs, but the blood is the important part.)

They paint the blood, close their doors, shut their windows. This night is the horror beyond any horror they've ever seen.

I don't know what it looked like, what it sounded like. The movie portrays it as a nearly silent, but incredibly bright thing, like a white tornado. It creeps into houses, slides under doors, seeps through windows. And you hear dying breaths.

And the next morning, every firstborn who was not under the lamb's blood is dead.

It breaks Ramses' will. His son is dead, too. He tells the Israelites to leave and never come back. And of course, they went.

You know the rest. You know that Ramses, in a fit of grief and madness, chases after the Israelites in full Egyptian force. That the Israelites, caught between the Egyptian army and the Red Sea, begin to panic. That through Moses, God parts the Red Sea -- literally parts it, like, they walk along the sand on the ocean floor with a wall of water on either side -- and that Egyptians chase them, that God brings the water crashing down on the Egyptians as soon as the Israelites are safely on the other side, and that eventually the Israelites made it to the Promised Land.

It's a wonderful story. But it's just a foreshadow.

Hundreds of years later, a baby boy was born to a virgin. I want to make sure that hits home. A virgin. She'd never had sex, with anyone ever, and she gave birth to a baby boy. He was born in a stable, on a night sometime in mid-spring. Today, we celebrate His birth in the winter. Of course, you're not dumb. You know who I'm talking about.

But a jealous dictator who is afraid that the people will rise up against him orders the slaughtering of every baby boy under one. But Mary and Joseph are warned by an angel, and they escape with baby Jesus.

Ah. Already we see the similarities.

Jesus grows up as a carpenter, but when He is in His twenties He leaves home to begin His ministry. He is baptised, the Holy Spirit comes on Him (burning bush encounter) and then goes into the wilderness, where He fasts for forty days and is tempted by the Devil three times. However, Jesus passes the test, and doesn't succumb. 'Cause he's just awesome like that.

He gathers His disciples, and they travel around the world (what they know of it, anyway), preaching the good news -- that the Messiah has come at last, that the Son of God has at last come to free them. But the Israelites think that the Messiah will come to free them from the Romans as Moses did from the Egyptians. And that's not what the Messiah is for.

But people do listen, and many accept. He works miracles, saves lives, casts out demons. Sometimes He is gentle, calling out, "Let the little children come to me!", and other times He is powerful, angry, even scary, showing that He possesses a power that we cannot even begin to grasp, walking on a stormy sea -- yes, on top of the water -- and calming the storm with one word. He never sins. He is always perfect. And many people love Him.

But others hate him.

They accuse Him of blasphemy, even of working for the Devil. It begins to spiral downhill, finally hitting rock bottom when Jesus' own disciple, one of His closest friends, Judas Escariot, trades Him in to the authorities for a few pieces of silver. They beat Him, whip Him, spit on Him. Shove a crown made of thorns on His head. His friend Peter denies that he ever even knew Jesus, frightened for his own life, while Jesus is forced to carry His own cross through Jerusalem. Weakened from His beating, He cannot do it. They take hammers and nails and drive the nails through His wrist and ankle bones into the cross, and raise the cross up, suspending Him by these nails that are ripping through His bone. They throw a spear at Him, stick a sword in His side. And finally (this is the absolute worst bit) Jesus is so covered with the sins of the people that God cannot look at Him, and He turns His face away. And, crying out in agony, Jesus dies.

It is Passover. The celebration of the Angel of Death passing over their houses hundreds of years earlier, when Moses and the Israelites sacrificed their lambs and painted the blood on their doors to save themselves.

The Blood of The Lamb, the pure, untainted, unspoiled Lamb, who had committed no sin, sacrificed Himself so that the Angel of Death would pass over us. So that we could live, and so that we could be free.

And the coolest bit is, the Lamb didn't stay dead. He came back. He rose. He's alive. He walked with His disciples (all forgiven, except for Judas Escariot, who killed himself) for a few more days, and then ascended into Heaven.

There are other connections between Moses' story and Jesus' story -- our story, too, really. For instance, the Israelites, wanting to go back to slavery in Egypt. It's horrible, but it's more comfortable than srimmaging for food out in the wilderness. At least they always knew what would happen the next day. Sometimes we're like that. Sometimes we want to back to bondage, because it's comfortable, so much easier just to keep sinning than to deal with the hard times that naturally cone with being free. And sometimes we have golden calves, and break the Ten Commandments, and whine and complain. Sometimes we're stuck waiting to go into the Promised Land for another forty years. But we're still free. That's the point. We're free from sin. We're going into that Promised Land eventually whether or not we mess up.

All because of The Blood of The Lamb.

Bet you never realized how important sheep were!