This is a rather interesting point, teresa. We tend to categorize the Bible as if it were book of proof texts, when that's not what it's about. It's a revelation of God.

The present tense is used. I think this refers to Satan's work now.

The problem is, Tom, it is in your view that I see God walking hand in hand with Satan.
Aaron, according to God's command, stretches out his hand with his rod over the rivers, over the canals, and over the pools, and Satan causes frogs to come upon the land of Egypt, fulfilling what God said would happen.
Aaron, according to God's command, stretches out his rod and strikes the dust of the earth, and Satan brings gnats throughout all the land of Egypt, fulfilling what God said would happen.
The Lord announces that very heavy hail will fall, and Satan makes hail to fall. And so on. It's like God saying to Satan, "Today I will permit you to do this, and tomorrow I will let you do that, and the day after tomorrow I will permit you to do that other work of destruction..."
Then the Israelites leave Egypt, and God commands Moses to stretch his hand over the sea, and He divides the waters for the people of Israel to go through it, and then He commands Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea again for Satan to make the water come back upon the Egyptians.
Well, there are dozens of examples I could cite where, according to your view, God and Satan work in perfect harmony.

Here's the quote:



The "it is Satan's power" looks to be describing the power of Satan which characterize his "decided attacks."



Immediately following we have future tense again. Also of note is it's saying that "Satan has come down in great wrath." Here "wrath" means what we are accustomed to, they type of wrath that we sinners exhibit, destroying and wreaking vengeance against those who get in our way.



That's really strange! In my view, Satan destroys, causes misery and kills while God restores, blesses and heals. It's odd that one would see this as "walking hand in hand."

I see Satan and Christ actually doing different things, not merely acting according to different motivations.



This is so wrong. God has never desired destruction or death or any such thing. Satan is always acting contrary to God's will when he does these things. There is no harmony at all, but the working out of principles that are completely contrary the one to the other.

Where did Jesus Christ teach that it is OK to harm or destroy those with whom you disagree? Where did He ever act this way? Christ went to His death, being tortured and murdered without lifting a hand, without raising a voice.

i see it more as God restraining and allowing. if we can see satan as eager to destroy and God is holding him back....
in the first paragraph it is very clear that God is holding back the winds/satan. but in the second paragraph we read Gods "vengence". other places we read of His "judgments". it seems to me that "justice" is God backing off and letting us have what we have chosen. if we have chosen satans rule-as jerusalem did- then God will step back and let us see what that is like. problem is, by that time we are so possessed we still dont get it.
i was just reading in the pioneers where satan tries to prevent any from being converted so that he wont have to bear their sins at the third coming. that is a mighty powerful incentive to kill off as many as satan can so they can never repent...

OK, Teresa, but this is what I said in another thread in reply to Tom:



So, it seems to me that the winds and the plagues are not the same thing.
As to the seven last plagues, they will be similar in nature to the plagues of Egypt.
But, in relation to the plagues of Egypt, I can't accept that God's representative stretches out his hand announcing that something will happen, and then it is Satan who makes it happen. If this isn't God and Satan working in harmony, then what is?

these were in the quotes i provided and so it seems there is much more than just

it kind of looks like they are working in "harmony" here, also:but as i said before i see it more as restraining and allowing.

but, having made all those points, im on the fence in some places. this, for example is pretty clear - on the surface....but then we have this which vindicates ellen whites statement:

so why dont we go through the egyptian plagues and the last plagues systematically and see what we come up with? we can play, "win, lose, draw", if im not being blasphemous.

i would say this was clearly God, but it caused no harm to anyone except dead sticks.

OK. Now let's consider this passage:

Ex 8
16 And the LORD said unto Moses, "Say unto Aaron, ‘Stretch out thy rod and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt.’"
17 And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice on man and on beast. All the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt.
18 And the magicians so did with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not; so there were lice upon man and upon beast.
19 Then the magicians said unto Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God."

About this, Ellen White comments:

"Pharaoh called for the magicians to work with their enchantments. They also showed signs and wonders, for Satan came to their aid to work through them. Yet even here the work of God was shown to be superior to the power of Satan, for the magicians could not perform all those miracles which God wrought through Moses. Only a few of them could they do. The magicians' rods did become serpents, [SEE APPENDIX.] but Aaron's rod swallowed them up. After the magicians sought to produce the lice, and could not, they were compelled by the power of God to acknowledge even to Pharaoh, saying: "This is the finger of God." Satan wrought through the magicians in a manner calculated to harden the heart of the tyrant Pharaoh against the miraculous manifestations of God's power. Satan thought to stagger the faith of Moses and Aaron in the divine origin of their mission, and then his instruments, the magicians, would prevail. Satan was unwilling to have the people of Israel released from Egyptian servitude that they might serve God. The magicians failed to produce the miracle of the lice, and could no more imitate Moses and Aaron. God would not suffer Satan to proceed further, and the magicians could not save themselves from the plagues. 'And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils; for the boil was upon the magicians, and upon all the Egyptians.' Exodus 9:11. God's controlling power here cut off the channel through which Satan worked, and caused even those through whom Satan had wrought so wonderfully to feel His wrath. Sufficient evidence was given to Pharaoh to believe, if he would. Moses wrought by the power of God. The magicians wrought not by their own science alone, but by the power of their God, the devil, who ingeniously carried out his deceptive work of counterfeiting the work of God. {1T 292}

Here it is specifically said that the magicians were working by the power of Satan, trying to counterfeit the work of God (which refers not only to the rod but at least to the first three plagues, too). So I see the first three plagues as being unequivocally called the work of God.

i was hoping we could take them in order. the "win, lose, draw" wasnt meant as "you vs me", but as God did it, the enemy did it, or we cant really tell from what we have been given.

as for the lice, only God can create life, so the question is, did God create the lice, or remove His protecting hand that He had been exercising towards the egyptians all along, and let the lice overtake the people?

im inclined to believe the Lord had been protecting the egyptians from, not just the lice but, many, many, things they had no idea of.

I've been keeping quiet because my opinions have already been expressed, and I was interested in what Teresa would say. I agree with what she has said.

God's protecting hand protects us from both Satan and the forces of nature. The bad things that happen to those whom God protects may be caused by Satan directly, or not. If not, these bad things may be caused by other evil beings, or by inanimate forces. The basic principle remains the same, which is God removes His protective hand, and bad things happen.

In the case of the plagues, God's servant indicated with the rod what would be destroyed once God's protective hand was removed. It wasn't necessarily Satan who caused the plague to occur, although it might have been. For example, the last plague, the killing of the first-born, looks to have been Satan as opposed to the forces of nature.

This brings up an interesting question. Why didn't Satan simply refrain from killing the first-born to make God a liar? Or, to put it another way, why would he kill the first-born given God said that was going to happen? What did Satan have to gain by this action?

On the surface, it may seem that Satan could gain more by not destroying the first-born, in an attempt to make God look foolish. But when considering what Satan had to gain, it seems he had more to gain by following the course he did. By killing the first-born he had a perfect opportunity to frame God for their killing, and continue misrepresenting God's character, as God was willing to take "credit" for their deaths.

Why was God willing to take such "credit"? For the same reason Christ was willing to tell the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. God was working within the paradigm the Egyptians had. Their idea was the true God was the one who was the most powerful, who overpowered the other gods. Now it's true that God is the most powerful, and that God demonstrated His power, but He didn't have to overpower the other gods by force, or Himself kill and destroy, in order to do so. Force is not a principle of God's government, and violence is not a part of His character. He was willing to allow Himself to be misunderstood as using force and violence, in order to reach those whose paradigms were so mixed up. God always has to reach us where we are, or there's no way He can communicate with us. We have highly overrated senses of our abilities to understand God and His ways, so He routinely humbles Himself to reach us in our arrogance and ignorance. He doesn't do so by acting contrary to His principles, but He allows us to misunderstand certain things (e.g. the immortality of the soul, or that He uses force and violence to achieve His ends) in order to teach us others (e.g. even if one should raise from the dead, if Moses is not believed, neither would Christ be, or God is the one true God, more powerful than anyone else).

I am starting out with the conviction that God is a certain way (i.e. like Christ) and when I see Him supposedly doing things which are not like Christ, I ask the question, "What's wrong here?" Of course, one possibility is that I'm misunderstanding what Christ is like, but in this case it seems to me much more likely that what happened in the Egyptian plagues is misunderstood than that Christ, in reality, would resort to force and violence to achieve His ends if necessary.

I cannot conceive, based on Christ's life and teachings, that He would ever, in any circumstances, kill innocent children in order to demonstrate that He is more powerful than another. I cannot imagine that He would ever, under any circumstance, use escalating force and violence, to compel an adversary to capitulate, along the lines that the Egyptian plagues are ordinarily understood.

Once one understands Christ's character to be a certain way, and understands the two principles that God is often presented as doing that which He permits, and that His protective hand saves us from many destructive things of which we are unaware, it's very easy to perceive the violent acts of inspiration in such a way that does not have God directly taking violent action or using force. It's simply a matter of viewing things from a certain paradigm.

A different paradigm to mine allows for God to do things mine does not. It allows God to do violent things, to kill and to use force, because this is what one sees inspiration as saying. Mine does not, because of Christ. If I see inspiration as teaching that God used force or violently killed or tortured someone, or coerced or incented others to act in such a way, my conclusion is that my understanding of the given passage must be incorrect, and what appeared to have happened didn't.

For example, in Scripture we read that God sent poisonous serpents upon the Israelites, and these serpents bit the Israelites, many of whom were injured or died. It looks like God did this because He was ticked off and wanted to teach the Israelites a lesson. From my paradigm, it's easy to see that what actually happened is that God withdrew His protecting hand, and the snakes which He had been protecting them from, caused the damage. God did not sick the snakes on them, nor was He ticked off, but this is what was perceived to have happened, and this is how inspiration (at least Scripture) records this event.

So the underlying question seems to come down to what we allow to be our bedrock in terms of determining what God is really like. Is it Jesus Christ?

Jesus Christ said that the things He did were the things He saw His Father do, and what He taught were the things He heard from His Father. Where did He here and see these things? From Scripture (the Old Testament). So the things He did and taught were what He saw God doing and saying in the Old Testament. Not Christ's actions and teachings appear to be very different than what we read of God doing and saying in the Old Testament. So what to do we do with this apparent discrepancy?

One approach would be to say that Christ did not give a complete revelation of God, but a partial one, revealing what God is like in certain circumstances, namely the circumstances which Christ met. Under different circumstances, God could act and speak in very different ways.

Another approach would be to say that we're simply misunderstanding what God actually did and said in the Old Testament, but Jesus Christ had it right. In this approach, we see Christ as saying, "If you want to know what God is really like, look at Me! Let me be your view, your picture, of God."

If we see the OT God as acting and speaking differently than Jesus Christ did in the flesh, I believe it means our paradigm needs adjusting. We need new wineskins so we can receive new wine. We need the eyes and ears of Christ, to see and hear the things in Scripture as He did.