By Bob Barney
In the Bible, the story of Israel’s exodus from Egypt is filled with awesome images. Usually, we have to depend on Hollywood animation to be able to visualize just exactly what some of the events that happened then looked like. The parting of the Red Sea, the Burning Bush and the Pillar of God… You say, “the Pillar of God? What’s that.”
Here is the story in the Bible... Exd 13:21 By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give
them light, so that they could travel by day or night.
Exd 13:22 Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.
What is a pillar of cloud? Well it obviously looked like a tornado in a desert! At night God stood by them as a pillar of flame, all the way to heaven as far as the eye could see! What an awesome sight to behold! Just imagine, people camping right next to a tornado that did not harm them. It stayed stationary for days at a time, then when it started to move, all of the people would FOLLOW IT! What many of us do not realize is that the God in the pillar was none other than Jesus Christ! Christ was with the church in the wilderness, Paul tells us so in 1 Corinthians 10:9. Also remember, Christ identified himself being the God of Moses in the eighth chapter of John, when the Jews asked him who he was he said, “Before Abraham was I AM!” When Moses asked God his name, he said “I AM that I AM, tell the people that I AM hath sent thee.” Jesus, in his day was telling the people that he was I AM, in Hebrew ‘Hayah!’ The personal name of Jesus! Jesus is Hayah Yahweh (I am The Everlasting One, or literally, I AM, ‘I AM that I AM’). None other than Jesus Christ in His pre-human existence was the God of what we call the Old Testament. God the Father NEVER uttered one word or appeared to anyone in the Old or New Testament! How do we know this? Jesus said so! Read John 5:37 for the shock of your life, “And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form…” Is there any clearer proof? The Bible is a light to our feet, a lantern to our paths, with which the God’s love has provided us. It testifies of Christ. It is to us, like the pillar was to the Israelites. Listen to that voice which cries, “I am the Light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of life,” John 8:12. Jesus Christ alone, as shown in the Bible, “is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” John 14:6. Follow that pillar, as the Israelites did to His pathway to eternal life.
Look at the COMPLETE Video below, from ABC news. I think this is as close as we will ever get to see just what that Pillar of God looked like. This video also explains why the hard hearted Israelites kept on rebelling and fighting God. Yes, the sight was awesome, but then people said, “awe, it was just a tornado!” So they sinned again. I guess they forgot that a natural tornado doesn’t blow for forty years! Watch this video, ESPECIALLY the last 45 seconds to experience what the children of God saw!
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