“Isn’t it cool how we get to live forever, while humans have to eventually either be with you our the Lord?” Dwight asked casually
Yeah! The big old choice!” Oscar chirped.
“It doesn’t seem to matter what I do. The Lord keeps winning.” Lucifer said bemoningly.
“It’s what I do.” The Lord interrupted.
“You stay out of this!” Lucifer screamed. There’s a new King of Egypt. Maybe I can convince him to help me do something about it. The Israelites seem to love The Lord when everything is going well. What if I could cause more chaos?” Lucifer wondered.
He slithered off to go influence the soon to be new king.
“Hey bud. Those Israelites living in your land could rise up against you at any moment. You know that, right.” Lucifer said, over and over again to create anxious thoughts. “If you’re going to be a real Pharaoh, you’re going to have to do something about it.”
8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”
19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”
20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”
“Excellent!” Lucifer screamed. “Now with all this death and grief, those people will be distracted by The Lord and turn to me instead. I will pretend to give them everything they want!”
The illusion of power was almost as good as the real thing. Suddenly, Lucifer noticed something.
“Hey! What’s up with that basket floating down the river?” Lucifer asked to himself.
“We have no idea!” Dwight and Oscar exclaimed in unison.
“What are you doing here?” Lucifer asked.
“There’s nothing going on in Hell.” Dwight admitted.
“We wanted to see what you were up to.” Oscar said.
“A Hebrew mother has sent her boy down the river. Surely he will die.” Lucifer said.
Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket[a] for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.
7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”
8 “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses,[b] saying, “I drew him out of the water.”
Lucifer watched as the Lord provided for Moses as he grew up.
“Ugh, the Lord is helping again.” Lucifer mumbled.
“Helping, leading, and providing are some of my favourite things to do.” The Lord interrupted.
“I wasn’t asking You.” Lucifer grumbled.
1 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
“I must capitalize on this moment. I must fill Moses with thoughts of dread. The Lord won’t like him so much now that he’s killed someone else.” Lucifer focused all his energy on thoughts like these.
13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “0Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian.
“Now that he’s isolated. Surely he will turn away from the Lord and over to me.” Lucifer said with glee. “Nobody likes hard and unpredictable times. He slithered off after Moses.