The walk from Egypt to Galilee.

Having an abundance of meat and dairy products but being unable to grow any grain in their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, from where did they receive their necessary supply of Carbohydrates as they waited to enter the promised kingdom.

Here's a hint-----Carbohydrates are any of a group of chemical compounds, including sugars, starches, and cellulose, containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen ‘ONLY’ with the ratio of hydrogen to oxygen atoms usually 2 : 1

Of which atoms, there was an ample supply in the cloud from the volcanic explosion of the island of Santorini, which blasted out some 35,000 kilometers of material into the stratosphere, around the time of the Exodus.,

Exodus 13, 21; And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night.

Solomon also speaks of the cloud that covered the Israelites in the desert and of the Manna that fell from heaven during the night. According to Solomon, the heavenly covering was a cloud by day and a host of stars by night, (a night sky ablaze with falling balls of burning hail stones). Then concerning the heavenly Manna, he says, “And that which was not injured by fire, [Burning hailstones] simply warmed by a faint sun beam melted away.

Each morning the desert floor was covered with the residue of the melted hailstones, small mounds of a flaky cellulose substance, which looked like coriander seed, and would melt and breed worms and stink if left out in the sun, and yet could be preserved when cooked, and tasted like biscuits mixed with the purest of olive oils.

In their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness the Israelites remained under the cloud.

Exodus 40:36-38 Now whenever the cloud lifted, the people would set out on their journey and follow it. But if the cloud did not rise, they remained where they were until it lifted.

After wandering in the wilderness for 40 years and after they had finally crossed the Jordon on dry land, all the young men who had not been circumcised during the forty years of wandering were then circumcised at Gilgal and spent some days resting until their wounds healed.

Joshua 5: 10-12; While the Israelites were camping at Gilgal on the plain near Jericho, they observed Passover on the evening (Which is the beginning) of the fourteenth day of the month. The next day was the first time they ate food grown in Canaan: roasted grain and bread made without yeast. The manna stopped falling then, and the Israelites no longer had any. From that time on they ate food grown in Canaan.

Did the cloud dissipate, or did the Israelites then cease to follow it as it drifted further to the northeast?

I’m not into miracles, I base my beliefs on the realities of life according to observable facts, reverting to faith, only when the required data to explain some phenomenon is as yet unavailable to the world.

Take for instance the so-call miracles that occurred around the time of the Exodus. Around that time the volcanic Island of Santorini or Thira as it is also known, which was situated in the Aegean-sea, on the Anatolian plate, which is subject to the forces of the over-riding African Plate that grinds against the Arabian plate in its Northern migration, exploded with many times the force of Krakatoa, which was a volcanic island that exploded in 1883, and that explosion was heard 5,000 kilometres away, and caused a tsunami that killed at least 36,000 people. It has been estimated that when the island of Santorini exploded, 35,000 kilometres of material was blasted out into the stratosphere, and that the explosive force would have created tidal waves of anything up to 130 ft high which would have travelled at speeds of around 150 miles per hour.

A cloud, that turned day into night around 1,500 BC, has been recorded in Chinese history, and would have covered all of north Africa. The African and Arabian plates intersect in a line that runs through the Red Sea and up the Jordan valley through the Dead Sea.

Look at the strange phenomenon that was occurring at the time of the Exodus. The cloud that blanketed north Africa and most of Europe, and turned day into a night so dark that a man was not able to recognise his own brother who was standing at arms-length from him. The rain of sulfuric acid that caused so much crop failure and the death of the livestock which were forced to feed on the polluted pastures, the following series of shock waves along the great rift valley and the fractures in the Sini peninsular which is situated on the Arabian plate, the bulging of the earth’s crust beneath the Red Sea which caused a highway to rise from the waters, with its following tremor when it collapsed and tidal waves that rolled in like two walls of water on either side of where the highway had been.

Wisdom of Solomon 19: 7-8, ‘Then was beheld the cloud that shadowed the camp, and dry land rising up out of what was before water, Out of the Red sea an unhindered highway, and a grassy plain rising out of the violent surge.”

Look even where the Israelites camped on the shore of the Red sea, which was smack bang in the middle of a major coal field in Egypt.
The bulging earth rising from the surging sea before them, pressurized gas screaming from the opening fissures creating towering pillars of fire to burn behind them, a strong east wind blew all that night causing the thick smoke to blind the pursuing Egyptians while lighting up the camp of the Israelites on the eastern side of those wild fires.

All these events were caused from pressures that had been built up over tens of thousands of years and would have occurred in their proper time, irrelevant as too the Israeli situation. Where the miracle lay, was in the fact that an unseen deity in a future time dimension, was able, through his prophet Moses, to organise the events leading up to and including the exodus itself at the precise time in history that this cataclysmic event occurred.

In the book “The Wisdom of Solomon, 16” Solomon has much to say about the days of Moses; he speaks of the strange hails that fell from heaven. Burning balls of frozen gases, some with the ability to burn even in water, some which burned with a heat so intense that they incinerated anything they came in contact with, while other hail, burned with a cold fire through which animals could walk unharmed.

Solomon also speaks of the cloud that covered the Israelites in the desert and of the Manna that fell from heaven during the night. According to Solomon, the heavenly covering was a cloud by day and a host of stars by night, (a night sky ablaze with falling balls of burning hail stones). Then concerning the heavenly Manna, he says, “And that which was not injured by fire, [Burning hailstones] simply warmed by a faint sun beam melted away.

Each morning the desert floor was covered with the residue of the melted hailstones, small mounds of a flaky cellulose substance, which looked like coriander seed, and would melt and breed worms and stink if left out in the sun, and yet could be preserved when cooked, and tasted like biscuits mixed with the purest of olive oils.

Carbohydrates are any of a group of chemical compounds, including sugars, starches, and cellulose, containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen ‘ONLY’, [of which there was an ample supply in the cloud from the volcanic explosion] with the ratio of hydrogen to oxygen atoms usually 2 : 1.

To be continued.

Continued from previous post.

While on the subject of miracles, let’s look at the fall of Jericho, “What a miracle this was.” A blast of the trumpets, a shout from the camp of Israel, and the walls of Jericho which had stood for hundreds of years collapsed, that is, except for the section of the outer wall from whose window, Rahab the prostitute had hung a red rope. Or was it a miracle?

Jericho was a double walled city. Within the two walls, ‘the inner and outer walls,’ houses were built, the roofs of those houses formed a rampart behind a low parapet, which circumnavigated the city, from where a clear view of the countryside could be observed. Joshua, the commander of the Israelite invaders, sent two men into the city to spy it out and gather information, those spies stayed in the house of Rahab the prostitute, and when the King of Jericho discovered that the spies were staying in the house of Rahab, he sent his men to order her to bring the spies out, but Rahab had hid them on her roof and she told them that two men had spent the night in her house, but they had left the city early that morning, and if the men would hurry they still might be able to catch them.

After the king’s men had left, Rahab revealed to the spies that the entire city was terrified of the Israelites, they had heard of the mighty wonders performed by the Lord who led them out of Egypt, and of the wars that they had won in their 40 years of wandering, she then made an agreement with the spies, that if they would guarantee the protection of her entire household, she would help them to escape.

When the spies agreed to protect her household, she planned to lower them down the outer wall of her house in a basket, which was the outer wall of Jericho, and the spies told her to hang the red rope used to lower them down, out of her window in the outer wall of Jericho, and no one in that house would be harmed.

Was it some great miracle that when the walls of Jericho collapsed, only that section of the wall in which the house of Rahab was built, remained standing?

Jericho, was built close to the fault line where the African tectonic plate grinds against the Arabian plate in its northern migration, and would have suffered and survived many earth tremors, surely the sound of trumpets blasting and the shouts of the Israelites could not do, that which the earth tremors had been unable to do and bring down the walls of Jericho?

In fact, it is believed that it was either the flooded Jordon River, or an earth tremor that caused a landslide up north of Jericho around the town of Adam, which dammed the Jordon River long enough for the Israelites to cross over on dry land.

Joshua 3: 14-16; It was harvest time, and the river was in flood. When the people left the camp to cross the Jordan, the priests went ahead of them, carrying the Covenant Box. As soon as the priests stepped into the river, the water stopped flowing and piled up, far upstream at Adam, the city beside Zarethan. The flow downstream to the Dead Sea was completely cut off, and the people were able to cross over near Jericho.

How did Joshua know the exact day when to cross the Jordon, who was it who told him?

The Wall of Jericho is the oldest city wall discovered by archaeologists anywhere in the world, and it is built of undressed stones. Knowing from the scriptures, that people in those days who were under siege in a walled city surrounded by enemy troops, would dig a hole through the wall and attempt to escape in the darkness, or in the case of Jericho, remove a stone in the outer wall.

It was harvest time when they reached the Jordon which was in full flood, and yet they had crossed the river on dry ground; Joshua 5: 1; All the Amorite kings west of the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings along the Mediterranean Sea heard that the LORD had dried up the Jordan until the people of Israel had crossed it. They became afraid and lost their courage because of the Israelites.
It’s all in the timing and being foretold of the future events.

Then came the time for the conquest of Canaan, which land was the rightful inheritance of the descendants of Shem, as was allocated to Shem by his father Noah, (But that’s another story) and the conquest would begin with the city of Jericho. If the Amorite kings and the Canaanite kings along the Mediterranean Sea became afraid after they heard that the Lord had stopped the flow of the Jordon for the Israelites to cross, they would become terrified when they heard of the blood bath that occurred in the city of Jericho.

For six days, the Israelites marched around the city once a day, blowing their trumpets, before returning to their camps which were set up around the city, while the terrified inhabitants prepared their escape plans, wondering when the attack would come.

Then on the seventh day, things were different, instead of returning to camp after the first circuit, they continued a second circuit, then a third, and a fourth, a fifth, a sixth; Surely this was it?

Then at the close of the seventh circuit the trumpets sounded a blast that echoed across the plains, and the shouts of the entire Israelite camp could be heard for miles around. The terrified inhabitants in the houses built into the double walls, kicked out the stones they had loosened for their escape route, the structural integrity of the outer wall was compromised, and even the slightest of earth tremors would bring the walls crashing down, that is, except for the section of the wall with the red rope hanging from its window, in which house, Rahab, her parents, brothers, sisters and even her servants were secure in the knowledge that they would not be harmed, even though every other man, woman, child and animal in the city would be butchered.

There are many who say that the story of Jesus walking on water cannot be taken literally and to defend my belief, I am forced to depart from the topic for a while, as the following has nothing to do with the Exodus.

Can every miracle as recorded in the scriptures be explained? No! At least not according to the data we have today. Speaking for myself, my beliefs are based on the realities of life according to observable facts, reverting to faith, only when the required data to explain some phenomenon is as yet unavailable to the world.”

Did Jesus really walk on water as recorded in the scriptures? By faith, I believe he did. Is it possible for a physical human body to stand on water? By faith, I believe that even Peter stood on the waters until he lost faith and began to sink.

Because I take the bible stories literally, I do not attempt to create some metaphor for these stories that today seem unbelievable, to make it appear that those events did not really happen but are simply stories to explain what I think they were meant to explain. Of course, if I did create my own metaphorical story, my metaphor would be different from the many other metaphors created for the same subject by other people, who, unlike myself, refuse to take the stories literally.

Matthew 14: 25-31; Between three and six o'clock in the morning Jesus came to the disciples, walking on the water. When they saw him walking on the water, they were terrified. “It's a ghost!” they said and screamed with fear.

Jesus spoke to them at once. “Courage!” he said. “It is I, don't be afraid!”

Then Peter spoke up. “Lord, if it is really you, order me to come out on the water to you.”

“Come!” answered Jesus. So, Peter got out of the boat and started walking on the water to Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he was afraid and started to sink down in the water. “Save me, Lord!” he cried.

At once Jesus reached out and grabbed hold of him and said, “How little faith you have! Why did you doubt?”

(Let me here Repeat) Quantum physicists have discovered that so called physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating, each one radiating its own unique energy signature.

If you observed the composition of an atom with a microscope you would see a small, invisible tornado-like vortex, with a number of infinitely small energy vortices called quarks and photons. These are what make up the structure of the atom. As you focused in closer and closer on the structure of the atom, you would see nothing, you would observe a physical void. The atom has no physical structure, we have no physical structure, physical things really don’t have any physical structure! Atoms are made out of invisible energy, not tangible matter.

Why did Peter, (whose body was made up of Swirling vortices of energy,) after having taken a few steps on the water, then doubt that it was possible?

The higher the speed of any apparent physical object the more opposition will be offered by the water’s surface tension against the movement.
The velocity reached by an average 80 kg human body falling from 2,000 feet is about 66 meters per second. That is the velocity through air, not through water.

What happens to an 80 kg human body falling headfirst at 66 meters per second when it hits water? It will be like hitting a concrete path.

The surface tension of the water will bend as that person’s head cracks open like a thin shelled egg, while the vertebrae are crushed together, and only when the body is slowed down to a certain speed, will that body be able to enter the water.

Even though the required data to explain this phenomenon of walking on water is not as yet available to the world, I believe that one day science will prove that it is possible for a human body of swirling vortices of energy, under certain conditions, to actually stand on water.

I am now 82 and it was way back when I was 7 years old that I was taken to the local Sunday School by the young girl who lived next door, it was there, where for the first time, I met Jesus. Did I walk home that day or did I levitate and float home, I don’t know.

To be 'on cloud nine' is to be in a state of blissful happiness.