Hopping the First Flight Out of Egypt

I’m not an expert in end times prophecy and don’t pretend to have any inside scoop on interpreting world events in that regard.

However,

As a lifelong student of the Bible, I can tell you this – it’s always significant if masses of people are taking flight out of Egypt.

Egypt is mentioned in over 558 verses of the Bible and is deeply symbolic to the the ultimate plans of God for this world. In other words, what happens in Egypt never stays in Egypt – it bleeds out into the rest of the world like the tributaries of the Red Sea.

Understand this, the people of Egypt are real people, and each has his or her own story with God. But in Biblical terms, Egypt usually symbolizes worldliness, bondage or the wholesale marketing of all that is not of God in this world.

God called His people out of Egypt.

God called His Son out of Egypt.

Now, Americans are being called out of Egypt – taking flight – and while world events on one level are simply world events – on a spiritual level – it’s God’s news ticker blaring headlines and instructions to His people reminding us to catch the first flight of every Egypt in our lives.

Egypt is any place we have taken our needs that seemed like a good idea at the time but turned out to be a place of enslavement and ultimate bondage.


It can be anything from lust, alcohol, or food to religious activities, education, and achievement. Whatever you ran to that you thought would provide you salvation but has now become your master – this is the Egypt from which you must now take flight.

This upheaval in the Mid-East is just the beginning of birth pangs but this is the time when every believer should “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” Hebrews 12: 1b-2

In other words, it’s time to stop playing church and worrying about the color of the carpets or whose turn it is to cover the nursery during the sermon. It’s time to be about our Father’s business.

Just as the citizens of Egypt have organized to protect their own homes, their own neighborhoods – so should believers in Jesus set up a spiritual watch around their own hearts and minds. Clean house! With the guidance of God’s word and the Holy Spirit, use the weapons God has provided to tear down every stronghold just as Paul exhorted the Corinthian church

“3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

Begin with your own heart and mind but then set up a perimeter around your household – a perimeter of prayer, of truth, of love and of obedience. But don’t stop there. Just as the Israelites worked on the wall of Jerusalem, each rebuilding the wall near their own home – so believers in Jesus should look to build the kingdom wherever they are at this moment.

Work with one hand. Fight with the other. Not with the weapons of this world – guns, machetes, clubs, politics, power, money. No, we have more powerful weapons at our disposal as defined in scripture and empowered by the Holy Spirit who provides the ammunition for our battle.

We should pray for the people of Egypt. But we should also watch what is happening with our spiritual eyes open.

For, as surely as this earth’s labor pains have begun, one day her water will break and the speed and intensity will reach an entirely new level. We need to prepare for that time before it comes for when it arrives, there will be no more time for preparation.

Do I sound like Chicken Little to you? I sound that way to me, too. But I don’t believe the sky is falling.

I do believe that God is calling us out of bondage. Reminding us that He has provided another way – a way to be free from sin and corruption and from all that is evil. That way is through Jesus and if we preach that, we should live as though we believed it. And if we live as though we believe it, our lives will look different from everyone else’s life. We will look like we have boarded a flight out of Egypt.

Our dear brother in Christ, Keith Green, who was taken from us too early for our liking, recorded a song “So You Want to Go Back to Egypt.” It can still speak to us today about the kind of inner fortitude we need to leave behind all that is not worthy of our lives and move forward trusting only in Jesus Christ.

It’s not easy – but this isn’t about easy, this is about Jesus.

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