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00:00Evidence, but no eyes.
00:04In ancient Egyptian theology, the creator god Khnum took a wife, a goddess, who had
00:09a frog's head.
00:11What he created, she endowed with life.
00:15The second plague is a direct challenge to this belief.
00:18The divine Nile, itself the basis of Egypt's life, becomes the source of death.
00:24Then the limitations of false religion are exposed.
00:28The magicians can replicate this plague, but they cannot stem or remedy it.
00:32Pharaoh, who did not know the lord is obliged to recognize Yahweh and asks Moses to pray
00:37to him that the frogs are taken away.
00:41Moses states that this will happen as final evidence that there is no god like Yahweh.
00:46Thus the plague ends, yet not with the frogs hopping back into the Nile, but in their death.
00:52Previously the elders had complained Moses made them stink, but now it is Egypt that
00:57stinks.
00:59Like all the plagues, the plague of frogs can be seen as a hurtful exercise of power.
01:05Really though, it is a convincing demonstration of who the true god is, and of his mercy in
01:10answer to prayer.
01:12Pharaoh's heart hardening is a willful resistance to this truth.
01:16The third plague, like the sixth and the ninth, comes unannounced to Pharaoh, and is a direct
01:21response to his heart hardening.
01:24The lord throws down a direct challenge, my people, serve me.
01:30Pharaoh is unwilling to yield dominance.
01:33The combat of the two begun, the third plague therefore is a direct warning to Pharaoh to
01:37submit and obey.
01:40It is not certain quite what the third plague was.
01:43The word has been translated gnats, lice, mosquitoes, maggots and sand flies.
01:50Only the unpleasantness is gruesome to imagine.
01:54This plague also marks the limit of the magician's powers.
01:58This time, still unable to limit or remedy it, they cannot even replicate it, and so
02:03they acknowledge that they are faced by a superior power.
02:07But their readiness to cry enough collides with the increasingly impervious heart of
02:11their king.
02:13Wrong choices do that.
02:14They bring the human will closer and closer to the point of no return where the power
02:18of choice itself has died.
02:21Reflection Ponder the words of this hymn.
02:25Take my will, and make it thine, it shall be no longer mine.
02:30Take my heart, it is thine own, it shall be thy royal throne.