The audio for this devotional is not available for now, but you can have your device read it to you.
Reading options
Verse:“Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” —Exodus 3:10
Those who watched the famous film The Ten Commandments have at least some idea of the splendors of ancient Egypt. Scholars list approximately 170 known pharaohs who ruled the country. Many of their burial sites have been plundered by thieves. However, on November 4, 1922, an archaeological team led by British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (ca. 1332–1323 BC), who ascended to the throne when he was about nine years old and died around the age of eighteen. On February 16, 1923, Carter’s team entered the sealed burial chamber of Tutankhamun, which was covered in gold and decorated with mystic symbols of protection. Inside the sarcophagus was the undisturbed mummy wrapped with 143 pieces of jewelry and covered with the famous blue and gold funerary mask.
Nearly a decade after opening the tomb, Carter finished photographing and cataloging all pf its 5,398 items, including thrones, archery bows, trumpets, a lotus chalice, food, wine, sandals, fresh linen underwear, and a ceremonial sailing boat for the pharaoh’s journey to the afterlife. Ancient mystic Egyptians conceived of the human body as the home for the three parts of the soul —the ka, the ba, and the akh.
Without the body as their physical meeting point, “the parts of the soul would become lost from each other, and the individual would cease to exist.” The mummification process, with its many rituals and prayers, aimed to keep the body whole for the afterlife. The tombs also held the basic means to make the journey to the world to come as comfortable as possible. The ten plagues that preceded the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt were God’s judgments against the Egyptian superstitions (see Exodus 7–11).
In contrast with the mummified Egyptian bodies, God will provide His followers with completely new and glorified bodies and a life with Him in heaven. “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body” (Philippians 3:20, 21). What a blessed assurance and wonderful hope we have!