In Monday’s Sydney MX Newspaper (not online) there was an article about scientists discovering evidence to support the claim of the 10 biblical plagues as described in Exodus.
“The plagues are believed to have occurred at an ancient Nile Delta city of Pi-Rameses, the capital of Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Rameses II and abandoned around 3000 years ago. Scientists claim the plagues could offer an explanation.
Climatologists say a dramatic climate shift created a dry period that triggered the first of the plagues, described as the Nile turning into blood.
This, the scientists say, was the toxic algae Burgundy Blood, which stains water red.
The algae set in motion the events that led to the second, third and fourth plagues – frogs, lice and flies.
The frogs would have been forced from the water, allowing mosquitoes, flies and other insects to flourish, and lead to the fifth and six plagues – diseased livestock and boils, infected by the insects.
The eruption of the volcano Thera more than 640km away is thought to be responsible for triggering the seventh, eighth and ninth plagues – hail, locusts and darkness, all caused by the effects of volcanic ash being blown into the atmosphere.
The cause of the final plague, the death of the first-borns of Egypt, is believed to be a fungus that may have poisoned the grain supplies, of which male first born would have had first pickings.”
There is a documentary on this on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday Night.
It is interesting that more than 3,000 years after the events of the exodus people are still studying what happened and developing theories for how things could have happened. If I had been in Egypt at that time and all this stuff happened as Moses had said it would I would be certainly believe that God is very real!
In the same way that science can now explain how things happened I find it still so very amazing that God can and does effect things in the world in such a way that science can show how things happen but not why they do! Only God truly knows the secrets of the universe but has given us the rules of science to help us discover them.
It is such a shame to see the church rebuke science as it does (and has done for the past few hundred years). If only the church would embrace scientific discoveries and work out how it fits into what the bible tells us – that would be a fantastic way for the church to be real and relevant to today’s society.
