In our present worldwide pandemic, Exodus 6 offers an incredible message of hope for the people of God. The LORD tells Moses He revealed Himself to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by the name “El Shaddai,” but He did NOT reveal Himself to them as the LORD or Yahweh as He was now doing for Moses, and as He would soon be doing for all Israel in the great exodus from Egypt.
The patriarchs needed to encounter “the Almighty” which is one of the meanings of the name El Shaddai. They were not in bondage and did not need to be redeemed from any particular circumstance. What they needed was to know the “El” or God who was above all the other “Els” at the time, the lesser gods of the other nations. They needed to know the “El” that was the supreme “El,” the Almighty God above all gods.
But now Israel was in Egypt. The Israelites were facing a predicament they had not encountered before. When they found themselves in cruel bondage, suffering under the lash of their Egyptian taskmasters; when their entire world had become nothing like the world of their forefathers, they needed a new revelation of God. And so, “Yahweh,” the I AM, appeared from within a burning bush.
Think of the scene this way. It was not the bush that was burning. It was God’s blazing throne of fire that had descended to the earth, superimposing itself on the bush and the land around it, the “holy ground” that Moses was now standing on. The heavenly court had come down. The King had come down. The Redeemer had come down. How do we know? What Yahweh said He came down to do revealed Who He was. Just as El Shaddai gave Abram a seven-fold promise, Yahweh, the Redeemer, the Deliverer, gave Moses and Israel a seven-fold promise:
I AM the LORD (6:6)
I will bring you out from the yoke of Egypt (6:6)
I will free you (6:6)
I will redeem you (6:6)
I will take you as my own people (6:7)
I will be your God (6:7)
I will bring you to the promised land (6:8)
The new revelation of God for the Israelites was the I AM Who would deliver them from bondage. We cannot miss this point: When the people of God encountered new circumstances, God revealed Himself in a new way! Their predicament called for a new understanding of the One Who would free them from those circumstances.
Today, as the newly constituted people of God, we find ourselves facing a situation we have never seen before: a worldwide pandemic, perhaps one of the pestilences described in Luke 21:11. And that means a new revelation of Jesus is on its way.
For hundreds of years, the Holy Spirit has been progressively unfolding the Person of Jesus to the world. Old Testament prophecies about Him, kings and priests who served as patterns or archetypes of Jesus as Deliverer, Savior, Prophet, Priest or King; and then the New Testament eyewitness accounts of Jesus in the gospels and in the letters, books, and prophecies of His disciples and successors, have given us a full portrait.
And while Jesus has been fully revealed in the Scriptures, we cannot say Jesus has been fully known. Which book of the New Testament have you avoided? Found impossible to understand? Always causes debates and arguments? That’s right. It’s the book of Revelation. This book is a prophecy, a foretelling of the time when Jesus will return to the earth. And it is time for Jesus in this prophecy to be made known.
I believe the revelation of God in our circumstances today will be an unveiling of the Jesus in the book of Revelation. In these seemingly unending days of disease, death, and disruption to our ways of life, the Holy Spirit will make Him known to us. I make no predictions about timing and give no theories about coming events. We know Jesus is coming back, and before He does, He will be known first in His Church. I am saying that the time to know Him is now.
And as the patriarchs were called to trust in El Shaddai, as the Israelite nation was called to trust in Yahweh, the people of God today will be invited to put their trust in the One Who is Coming Back Soon. He was revealed in the Scriptures but is being made known today. The Holy Spirit is going to unlock the mystery of this prophecy, at last.
The book of Revelation has been for many believers a mystery. The prophecy itself has been controversial and divisive, with all sorts of theories, interpretations, and predictions, all sorts of people trying to work out the timing and plan of God. Beloved, this should not be our focus! The revelation of Jesus by the Spirit should be our focus, what this book reveals to us about the Person Who said two thousand years ago, “Behold, I am coming soon!” (Revelation 22:12)
May He make Himself known to you, beloved of God!
Michael Chrasta
(A former administrator in two University-Model Schools and Director of Ministry for UMSI, Mike is now President of The Vine and the Fig Tree, Inc, a non-profit public charity whose mission is to return our nation to first principles and bring the manifold Wisdom of God to our local cities.)
Mike Chrasta
In addition to having served as the Director of Ministry for NAUMS, Inc., Mike has been active in the University-Model® school community for nearly fifteen years. Mike served as a teacher and administrator at Lucas Christian Academy and where his three children (Joseph, Rebecca, Rosie) have attended. Mike has more than twenty-five years’ teaching experience, holds three graduate degrees (M.A., English; M.A., Public Policy, and a PhD. (Arts and Humanities-History of Ideas), and is a certified Texas Master Naturalist.
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