Bible Time

Exodus Plagues -- Introduction

The Book of the Departure popularly called the Book of Exodus is a prophetic narrative dealing with the return of Jesus. The first part of that book gives a plague narrative that can be mapped out to modern dates. Those plagues had their first prelude events in the Lebanon War of July, 2006, they see the first true plague, the Plague of Blood on August 1, 2007, and they continue with various events through April of 2010. This section contains a series of articles dealing with the timing and fulfillment of the modern Exodus plagues.

Structure Of Exodus

The Book of Exodus begins with some introductory materials, primarily the attempt by Pharaoh to kill the Hebrew babies at the time of Moses' birth. It then moves quickly through Moses' biography and then begins a narrative dealing with the plagues on Egypt. Those plagues occupy the first large part of the book until the Isrealites are out of Egypt. The book then turns to various other topics including the building of the Tabernacle.

The book has several Book Order related prophecies, like 13 Isaiah 2:1 and 45 Philippians 1:6 that show the Book of Exodus is narrative about the day of Yahvah and not primarily (or at least exclusively) an historical narrative. The challenge is figuring out how to map the text of the Book of Exodus into an end-times, plague-timing, timeline.

As a consequence of other Bible Time related work it became apparent that the unpacking rule for taking the Book of Exodus and turning it into a book of prophecy is to use the same prophetic ratio as used in Noah's flood and Jesus' public ministry. In both those other day-accurate prophetic stories the key ratio is 30-to-1, where 1 day in the narrative maps to 30 days (and/or years) in the modern prophetic fulfillment.

This rule is strict in the sense that other time references in the text do not apply to the modern prophetic application of time. Also, no time is arbitrarily inserted. Time must occur in the text for the prophetic clock to move forward. It moves forward each time a day reference occurs.

Historical Timing

The general timing of the season of the Exodus from Egypt is hard to establish directly from the text of the Bible. There are 3 parts to the narrative, each with different degrees of difficulty.

The easiest part of the timing of the Exodus is the 40 years when the Israelites where wandering in the wilderness. This is the usual overall time length cited for the Exodus from Egypt. But, there are 2 other times that matter to the principle behind this time in history.

After the 40 years are over, there is a 7 year period when the Israelites are conquering Canaan. These years are recorded in the Book of Joshua and are timed by watching the narrative around Caleb. In effect Caleb explains there has been 45 years since he was a spy in Canaan and that itself was 2 years after the Exodus proper, so there has been 47 years since the Exodus when Joshua dismisses the army for home.

The hardest season to establish in the narrative is the time before the Exodus. How long was it between the burning bush and the actual departure? The text of the Book of Exodus is deliberately unclear as to how much time elapsed. It does not give dates, which can be measured against the calendar, until after the plagues are mostly over and the nation is beginning the process of receiving the Mosaic Covenant.

There is a relatively simple parse of the Exodus plagues account that puts those plagues at around 40 days. This is computed by simply looking at each of the times in the text when the days seem to advance. In this scenario the entire narrative of plagues takes place in well under 1 year. Under this case the total time for the Exodus is something like 48 years.

BUT... There is another possibility.

The narrative may not be trying to establish an accurate historical timeline, but rather it may be trying to establish an accurate prophetic timeline that informs future stories more so than it does the exact historical story that took place between Moses and Pharaoh and was watched and experienced by all the others who were living in Egypt at the time.

Under this scenario a prophetic grammar must be applied to the plague times and the results of reading the text using that grammar will inform the schedule.

This section of this website contains articles that explain the detailed results of applying that grammar and discovery of that schedule. The net of that study is that the burning bush was 3 years ahead of the Exodus from Egypt, yielding a total Exodus time of 50 years. Now 50 years is the total number of years in a Jubilee cycle and is figurative for the idea of being released from slavery at the end of a Jubilee.

It may actually be the case that the Exodus from Egypt was also 3 years from the burning bush, with the exact schedule not included directly in the text. Support for this idea comes from various references to crop cycles found amongst the plagues. If the plagues spanned several years, then the crop cycle times make sense since they also occur across time intervals measured in years.

Further Details

The burning bush that Moses approached across the desert with his shoes off is not the earliest event in the Book of Exodus. The book begins with the events surrounding Moses' birth, his journey from Egypt his covenant making with a wife and then his call to return back to Egypt and deliver the Israelites from bondage.

Those earlier stories also include several single day time references that operate under the same prophetic grammar as the plagues themselves. These additional stories add another 6 months to the overall length of the time described by the Plagues section of the Book of Exodus.

Note carefully how the Book of Exodus, or the Book of the Departure, is taking an historical narrative, that included the 80 years after Moses' birth and weaving the story such that it can be read with a simple prophetic grammar. That way of reading the story provides a 3.5 year narrative surrounding the plagues and the prelude to those plagues.

This is the same overall length of time as seen in 39 Daniel 12 and in various places in 66 Revelation.

The Book of Exodus provides the detailed schedule for what is popularly called the second half of the Tribulation.

Headlines So Far

The very first headline that followed this Exodus Plagues story followed the story of killing Hebrew male babies. This story hit in July of 2006 and was the Lebanon War when a son of Pharaoh took Israel to an unprepared war in Lebanon.

The burning bush headline unfolded in January of 2006. The "fire" part of the burning bush story was comet McNaught. Visible first in the northern hemisphere and then dramatically across the sky in the southern hemisphere, this comet put on quite a show. On the ground, there was a strange day in Washington DC when the new General Secretary of the United Nations came to visit United States president George Bush. Within an hour before their meeting at the white house there was construction banging in a parking garage near the US capital building that caused the Capital, including all US Senators and US Representatives to evacuate the building. This was the removing of sandals at the time of Moses' visit to the Bush.

The bridegroom of blood incident, that took place at the inn with Zipporah and Moses, unfolded April 16, 2007, with the terrorist shooting at Virginia Tech. With the world watching live broadcasts from the Inn at Virginia Tech, many of the details followed closely the associated Bible story, including the nationality of the shooter matching that of the new UN Secretary General. This headline suggests future headlines will be some of the most severe seen on the Bible Time charts to date.

Surprises

Almost every American Christian who has been around awhile is familiar with the classic anti-Christ theology that says an anti-Christ will arise an take over the world in the era preceding Jesus' return. There is considerable complexity to this theory which I won't dwell on here.

Nowhere in that theology is there any discussion about a Moses-like figure who will prepare the world so that he can turn it over to Joshua (Jesus) at Jesus' return.

What is surprising about the idea that the Book of the Exodus is the precise schedule for this time in history is that it also dwells on the positives and the problems of God's man in action through this time in history.

Saving that Hilter may have been the anti-Christ, his body was thrown into a lake of fire after all, it appears the real story is radically different than most people have been lead to believe.

The person who has been in the "eye of the storm" for each of the Exodus Plagues related dates is Ban Ki Moon the new Secretary General of the United Nations. The man has a personal biography that matches many of the features of ancient Moses and he is likely the end-times prophetic Moses who will eventually lead modern prophetic Israelites out of bondage and prepare them for Joshua's leadership.

Organization

I've set this section of the website up to collect information related to this most important story. Pages will be changed as headlines develop.

Use the next/prev links in the headers and footers of each page to follow through the articles in order if you wish to read everything in this section. To skim the section use the left navigation column to see a summary of all available articles.

Prayer

The plagues run through April of 2010. I pray Jesus will show you a way, as he did for the ancient Israelites, to see your own way through to the end of the modern replay of the Book of Departure. In Jesus' powerful name. Amen.

Phil Stone
Updated May 10, 2007