"Then the Lord God said to Noah, "Enter the ark, you and all your family, because I have seen you righteous before Me in this generation. You shall also bring with you into the ark the clean cattle by sevens, male and female; and the unclean cattle by twos, male and female; and the clean birds of heaven by twos, male and female, to keep seed alive on the face of all the earth. For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will blot out from the face of the earth every living thing I made." (Genesis 7:1-4) In reading the above verses we learn that the Lord God caused the flood on the earth to last for 40 days and 40 nights.  There are several numbers in the bible having specific meanings of spiritual significance.  The number 40 is one of these meaningful numbers.  This number in particular is repeated several times in the Holy scripture signifying various meanings such as: a period of test or trial, a period of punishment for discipline (not punishment for judgement), or a period of preparation.  In this article we will list a few examples where the number 40 points to a period of preparation. We'll see that God gives us the chance, the aid, and the grace for preparation. It is however up to us to respond and utilize this preparation period, respond to God's grace, and put in our struggle for a succes...

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TIMING: While there aren’t definitive sources that corroborate the traditional timing of the life of Moses (1400-1201 B.C.), for the sake of the chronology the crossing of the Red Sea is about four hundred years after Joseph dies. This gives time for the pharaoh that loved Joseph to die, and for a new king to come to power and treat the Israelites harshly (Exodus 1: 8-22).  REASON TO READ: There are several levels on which one could read the story of Exodus: Historically as a story of the Israelites, As a metaphor of our struggle against sin, To study Moses as a model of leadership, To study the character of God in how He deals with his difficult people, and many more perspectives that we could not cover in a single article. We will explore each of these reasons when we discuss how this story fits in the top ten, below. BRIEF SUMMARY: This is one of the most popular stories in the Bible, so we will not spend too much time elaborating here on the details. The main events are Moses grows up in Pharaoh’s house (Exodus 2:1-10), He realizes his people are being oppressed, tries to liberate them by his own strength, kills an Egyptian, and flees to Midian (Exodus 2:11-25), He sees God in the burning bush and God tells him to go back to rescue the Israelites (Exodus 3), Moses tells God that he is not the right man for th...

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