p. 5 | WITNESSES IN BRICKS by A. F. Schauffler

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 7, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 32.

WITNESSES IN BRICKS.

By A. F. Schauffler

[A. F. Schauffler, D.D., in Christian Work.]

THE story of Israel’s oppression in Egypt has been denied as unhistorical. ‘There was no such oppression, said some skeptics. Now this criticism, too, has been shown to be false. If you turn to Ex. 1:11, you read, “Therefore they did set over them [the Israelites] ‘taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for ‘Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.” As this did not accomplish what the Egyptians desired, we read in Ex. 5:7, 8: “Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, . . . and the ‘tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon ‘them.” And later on we read that the taskmasters said to the people, “Go therefore now and work; for there shall no straw be ‘given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks.”

So far the record of the Word. Now in these later years, thirty-two centuries after these events, what do we find on making excavations in Egypt? At Pithom they have excavated these very “treasure cities,” and have found the lower layers of bricks to be well made with straw. Then come layers of bricks that have poorer straw, which points to the time when the poor Israelites had to collect their own straw as best they could. Then come other layers of bricks that have no straw at all, which we may well suppose to have been made when even what straw the slaves could gather gave out. We read of sermons in stones. But here we have sermons in bricks, and they preach to us this truth, that the Word of God is true, and that the history that it records is reliable.