sermonette: Head 'Em Up and Move 'Em Out!

Mike Ford
Given 15-Jan-94; Sermon #110s; 15 minutes

We've got some handouts here that are being passed out. It should have a timeline and a map. There should be enough for everyone. Of course, the danger a speaker faces when they use a handout is that no one will listen to what he says they will be reading. Try not to do that, but you will need that, I think to help follow along with what I have.

Even though Passover is still 2.5 months away. It's probably not a bad time in the dead of winter to think about the spring holidays. And what I have for you this afternoon is something I've thought of off and on for 4 years now, so I'll try to get it into 12, 14, 15 minutes.

Here's a hypothetical situation for you. Let's say that you are the logistics officer. In charge of moving and supplying let's say 2.5 million troops. Now these troops are housed spread out over a 300 square mile area. And your job is to gather them together. At a preset central staging area and line them up by division and marched them off.

Now along with 2.5 million troops, you'd have all kinds of assorted baggage that would go with that. You'd have the supply trains, the food, the various types of luggage. And let's also suppose that you're going to do this without any mechanical or electronic help. In other words, no cars, trucks, phones, faxes, anything of that type. And I'm going to give you ample time to do this. I'm going to give you, let's say 5 hours. What, you could not do it? You're right, you could not.

But that's just what some would have us believe took place 3500 years ago in Egypt. Ever since I became aware of this new understanding 4 years ago, I've been very puzzled by it. By new understanding, I mean the belief by some that the Jews had been right all along and that Passover really is on the 15th of Nisan. The belief that Passover is actually the night that we celebrate the night to be much observed. Some believe that God instituted Passover as the 15th begins. And that Jesus Christ moved it back a day.

I remember discussing this issue with friends. And worldwide, they are still in worldwide, and I was not proselytizing, you understand, I was merely having a discussion. But one friend in particular who's a local elder. asked me a question. He said, What difference does it make when the Israelites celebrated the Passover as long as we celebrated on the right day.

Well, there is a couple of things now for obvious reasons. If the Israelites had done it on the wrong day, celebrated Passover on the wrong day, they could very well have died. And for us, I think once you've accepted an error. Without proving it one way or the other, maybe you do not think it's important enough to look into, but once you've accepted it, I think you've set yourself up for accepting more and more error, and each one successively accepted easier than the one before.

Now lest you think I'm going to tackle the entire Passover controversy in a sermon that I'm not. All I want to do is look at a, take a common sense look at one question. And only one question. Can 2.5 million people move out of an area on foot in 5 hours? It's all I want to find out one simple question.

Now in these handouts that I've given you, you've got a map. And you've got a timeline, actually two timelines. I hope the map will give you just a little better idea of the distances involved. And on the timeline we've got, like I said, two timelines. The upper timeline shows you. The events as they unfolded the way we have always understood them. The lower timeline will give you this new understanding or perhaps the traditional Jewish teaching you might call it.

Now look on your maps if you would. And you'll see the area labeled Goshen. Obviously this is, as we know, where the Israelites lived. Goshen was approximately 20 miles wide. And about 15 miles long, you might want to write that on there somewhere. The city of Rameses you'll see up at the upper edge of Goshen. was a city that's, I would say within from all that I could discover within the area of Goshen. It was a city built by Israelite labor. It was one of Egypt's treasure cities. And the exodus will begin at Rameses. And it will leave for Succoth. You'll see that on your map to the southeast, 32 miles away. Just for perspective, you might want to put that on there.

Now remember this is a time of no mechanical or electronic conveniences, no cars, trucks, phones, or faxes. We're going to move 2.5 million people out. Now these people assembled in Rameses, and they marched out in order, including children. Uh, the elderly undoubtedly some handicapped. Uh, they had baggage, whatever personal possessions that they could bring with them. The fruits of their spoiling of the Egyptians, they had that. They had animals, who knows how many animals. If everyone had one animal, that's 2.5 million animals, and they probably had much more than that. Big herds of livestock.

Now that on the timeline you put the timeline now in front of the map and look at the two different versions there you'll see that the big difference. is in the way the events have been compressed on that bottom timeline into about half the time. Now, on the upper timeline, you see the 14th and the 15th are pretty chock full of all the events that took place and then beneath that, the 14th is a relatively dead day. Under this new understanding.

I was in a Bible study 4 years ago. I'll never forget this when this new understanding was brought out. And I asked the associate pastor during the Bible study, I said, How could this massive undertaking, this incredible exodus of people, how could it be accomplished in half the time? that we previously thought it took. And you want to pay attention to this answer because this is deep. He said, and I quote, Their loins were girded. Tell me me. Now I get it. No, that was it. That was the end, that's the answer. And we went on to other, other topics. That was the entire explanation. Their loins were girded.

Let's see if we can answer this one simple question. Let's look at this theory and see if that's what it took. Now to make this theory work, we are going to have to make some changes and allow some concessions to get to this one question I want to answer. For instance, a day for the purposes of this new theory, a day will begin at full dark instead of sundown. Another concession is that the Israelites will have to completely spoil the Egyptians before the last plague. They'll have to assemble in Rameses for the Passover. I know that you probably thought they observed it in their homes, but we are going to concede this point and have them assembling in Rameses for the Passover. And they have to slay, clean, prepare, roast, eat, and burn the remains of the Passover lamb in absolutely record time. And then they have to leave Egypt in the middle of the night. Forget about the verses that talk about staying in your homes until morning. We're going to concede that point.

Actually, all of these points are easily disproved, but each is really a sermonette in itself. So for the sake of this argument here, let's concede these points and let's isolate on one section. Can they physically leave Rameses in 5 hours?

Now I come up with 5 hours figuring that the earliest. That they could be part would be 1 a.m. The Death Angel passed, we know roughly at midnight. Pharaoh had to send the messengers to Moses. Moses had to get the word to the elders. The elders had to tell the people it's OK to pull out. I do not think it could be done in an hour, but let's say it could be done by 1 a.m. This all took place in the springtime, so daylight and nighttime were virtually equal 12 hours apiece. Sunrise, we are going to say would be at 6 a.m., so 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. gives us the 5 hours. Now they had to be out of Rameses by sunlight because the Bible is specific, very specific. They left by night.

Now, as we all know, Moses was a former general. He was probably as well versed on logistics as anyone who ever lived. The moving, the feeding, the supplying of an army, but even Moses was not this good.

Now I might mention that some people do believe that the Israelites left directly from their homes. But Exodus 12:37, you do not need to turn there, but it finally shows that they left from Rameses.

So let's put 2.5 million people on the road outside Rameses lined up ready to go, headed to Succoth 32 miles away. It's hard to envision this many people I know. But how wide would their column be? They could not all line up. Across the land this way, they had to follow this road to a certain extent. So let's say that it was 1 mile wide, 0.5 mile on either side of this road, might be stretching it, but that's the very widest that I think it could have been. And if it's 1 mile wide, then the column would be 10 miles long. To get 2.5 million people in all the related baggage be 10 miles long. So picture that in your mind mile wide, 10 miles long.

I know some of us here remember going to the feast in Jekyll back in the 60s under the big tent. 8 or 9000 people. Do you remember how long it took to get out of the parking lot you had driven? This was only for 8 or 9000 people. Sometimes it took up to an hour. To get that last person out of the lot. Some people even walked to their motels. We had several parking lots, and we were very well organized, but it still sometimes took an hour for that last person to get out of the parking lot. So keep that in mind.

Back to the children of Israel, 2.5 million people. How fast could they move? Well, a trained army on foot, I found out can move at 2 to 2.5 miles an hour as a trained army. Children of Israel were not a trained army. They had the elderly, the children, possibly some handicapped. They had the herds. You're only going to move as fast as you can push that oxen. And it was dark. The pillar of fire came later. I think that they would be very fortunate to average 1 mile an hour, very fortunate.

After I had prepared this sermon, I was reading a book and I came across one little stat that I think fits in right here. It was talking about the English and Boer War of 1900 in South Africa. 21,000 English soldiers were headed to the town of Ladysmith. 21,000 soldiers. And the author mentions the baggage and whatnot supply trains that go with them, and I'll just quote here. He says that they were attended by the innumerable wagons and 15,000 oxen. This incredible train was 15 miles long just to supply 21,000 soldiers, 15 miles long. And required 2 days to pass any one spot. Even when moving sharply. That's well less than 1 mile an hour for a trained army and their supply train.

So let's say the children of Israel averaged 1 mile an hour. And I think at every turn here I'm being extremely liberal in these estimates because I have this point that we want to make here. So from the point, the first person stepped out on that road from Rameses headed to Succoth. Until the time that the last person in line crossed the starting point. Remember there is a 10 mile gap between the beginning and the end. That point would be 10 hours later. They left at 1 in the morning. You can see that puts them well after sunrise. Most towards lunch. Not at night. Not at night.

Now the Bible is not explicit as to when they arrived in Succoth. We do not know if it was the next day, 2 days. We really do not know, but it's really immaterial. They did not under this scenario and could not have left Rameses at night.

This new understanding that this is actually an old theory just will not work. It just will not. Even though their loins were girded, it just will not work.

You see, the truth is very simple. The truth is very clear, but this is not, this deception is not clear at all. It depends on so many perversions of scriptures, so many concessions, so many twists to fit everything in. And even if you can see all the points that I did at the beginning, it just physically can't be done.

So why is this even important? And why even go through this? Because I think that history tends to repeat itself. And Satan has attacked. The church before and subverted the church before in the area of the Passover. And he's doing it again. And I do not think that you can concede even a minor point. Some would think a minor point as this because it just will not wash.

So as we come up on the spring holidays here in another couple of months, I would take it kindly if you held on to your timelines and looked at them and a lot of research went into it. At your leisure and during your study times. Take a look at this timeline and try to fix it in your mind, and I hope in some small way this has been helpful to you.