Tag Archives: miracles

The Story of the Ten Plagues
The Exodus from Egypt

The king kills countless kids

The Israelites (the descendants of Jacob) were getting so numerous that the new Pharaoh was afraid of them. So he decided to enslave them and have all their baby boys thrown into the Nile River.

Jacob’s great-grandson Amram and his aunt Jochebed had a baby boy, so they put the baby in the Nile… inside a waterproof basket, with their daughter watching over it. Pharaoh’s daughter found the baby in the basket while she was bathing in the Nile. She adopted the baby, named him Moses, and hired his mother to nurse him for her.

After Moses grew up, he was watching his fellow Hebrews working, when he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. So Moses killed the Egyptian. When Pharaoh heard about that, he tried to kill Moses. The other Hebrews weren’t happy with what Moses had done, either. So Moses ran away from Egypt and lived in Midian until that Pharaoh died.

The Israelites were still slaves under the next Pharaoh. So when Moses was 80, God spoke to him from a burning bush and told him to go tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt. On the way back to Egypt, the all-good God tried to murder Moses for some reason. But Moses’s wife touched his feet with their son’s foreskin, which convinced the never-changing God not to kill him.

Moses and his brother Aaron told Pharaoh that the God of Israel wanted his people to go out into the wilderness for a festival. But Pharaoh didn’t know that god, so he refused to let them do that.

God could have instantly overcome that obstacle in a peaceful way, like by making Pharaoh no longer want to keep his slaves, or by teleporting the people out of Egypt. But God cared more about showing off than about the freedom of his people and the wellbeing of all the innocent people of Egypt. So instead, God decided to cause a lot of unnecessary death and suffering, and to let his people continue to be mistreated in the meantime.

Continue reading The Story of the Ten Plagues
The Exodus from Egypt
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How to tell if someone really believes in Jesus

If someone claims to believe in Jesus, ask them if they ever get hungry or thirsty. If they answer yes, that means they don’t actually believe in Jesus. If they answer no, you still need a little more evidence before you can conclude that they’re a believer.

Ask the alleged Christian if they obey everything Jesus commanded. Do they always give people whatever they ask for?1 Have they sold everything they owned and given the money away to the poor? Do they hate their families? Do they let criminals mistreat them as much as they want without resisting? Do they mutilate their bodies every time they do something wrong? Have they demonstrated their love for their friends by killing themselves? Anyone who claims to know Jesus but doesn’t do what he commands is a liar.

Next, ask them to show you some miracles like Jesus did. Jesus says everyone who believes in him can do all the same things he did, and more! So have them start off with some of the miracles that Jesus did, like mind reading, turning water into wine, turning a little food into a lot of food, walking on water, flying, disappearing, controlling the weather, curing every disease, and raising the dead.

Continue reading How to tell if someone really believes in Jesus
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