Picture
of lock and Viking ship by Aida Besancon Spencer 6/26/2024
Three o’clock in the morning, I slid back the heavy curtain
on the window to take a look at night on the river and the early dawning of the
northern sun. Instead, to my shock, I found myself confronting a solid,
concrete wall just about two feet from my face.[1]
It wasn’t there when I went to sleep. I wasn’t dreaming; I
was awake, and I was astonished! If I’d opened the window, I could have reached
out and touched it! But, as I gaped at it, it looked like this wall was gently
but steadily dropping away. Then, I realized, the wall wasn’t moving. No, the 2,600-ton
Viking river cruiser, on which we were traveling the Rhine River, was rising
until it crested the top of that wall, and we emerged up into the night air.
Now, the reason I was there is that we were attempting to recapture
and explore a treasured childhood memory Aída had wanted for years to share
with me: journeying through the castles of Germany which she had visited in her
youth with her Dutch father and family. The cruise was set for eight days,
riding the Rhine from Amsterdam in the north down to Basel, below the Alps,
from where we would fly home.
When we reached Germany’s castle-country, we did indeed see
twenty castles from the top of our ship.
The gracious staff of this affordable, yet immaculately-kept
cruiser equipped us all with an informative and entertaining narration, a
glossy handheld pamphlet guide to the “Castles on the Middle Rhine,” large
umbrellas to keep the sun off us, chaise lounge chairs on which we could
stretch out our legs, all the bottled water we could guzzle on a bright sunny
day, and a break from the previous days of excursions in which we toured
cities, cathedrals, fortresses, and other interesting sites all along the river.
And all that in 8 days!
But to arrive at this destination toward which we’d set out
from the Netherlands through Germany into France, as we approached Switzerland,
our ship had to navigate through ten separate locks, a new experience for me.
Every one of the staff was so pleasant and accessible, I
decided to ask what these brief passages in and out of the cement locks I had
witnessed in our window that morning were all about.
I was guided to the ship’s Hotel Manager, Stefan
Strobl-Santos, an imposing young officer who looks like a European movie star
and melds efficiency and friendliness like an art form.
My question was: what exactly are locks and why do we need
to go through them? It’s not that these brief nautical passageways were
annoying. Not at all. Eight of them I didn’t even notice we were in, if I
hadn’t occasionally looked out a window, after that early morning discovery, but,
having never been on a river cruise before, I wondered: why were these locks
here at all?
He drew me a picture as he explained that it was as if our
ship was climbing a stairway. The Rhine River we were on was actually rising
between Germany and Switzerland and the locks were chambers we were entering so
a sluice could pour in water beneath us and slowly, carefully, raise our level
at each juncture. What we were avoiding were rough rapids over the equivalent
of waterfalls in the river’s stream, and other obstacles such as sandbars that
would have made our journey much more arduous and treacherous.[2]
We were constantly being moved to a greater height.
The hefty Viking craft was being lifted by the power of the
increasing volume of pouring, rising water to a new level, on which it could
begin to move carefully at first and then more swiftly out of the lock to
continue on the river to its destination.
Thinking this over, I was struck by the curious similarity
between what we were experiencing and the marvelous delivery of the fleeing
Israelites, escaping from Egypt in the Exodus, when they suddenly found themselves
confronted by the impassible Red Sea.
The similarities? We both needed to go through a deep river
to get to safety.
For us, who knows? If caught in a terrific storm, without
the locks, could our ship have hit rapids, logs, sandbars, and the force of the
waves constantly slugging into us with tremendous force sweep our ship
sideways, backwards, careening into a sandbar or thrown up onto the shore?
Probably not, since the ship was closed by strong walls and windows, but at
least the ride would have been rough, not smooth as it always was.
The differences? Well, as we look at what confronted the
Israelites, our situation, even theoretically in worst case scenario, was
nothing compared to theirs.
*They had no ships, no boats, no rafts, no bridges, no means
but their feet to get themselves, their children, their elderly, their infirm,
across a body of water deep enough to drown them all.
*They were in a rush now with no time to sit down and rethink
their plans. They were escaping from a land that had held them captive for several
hundred years. And their former captors who had begrudgingly let them go had
just been told by their leader, as recorded in Exodus14:5: “What have we done?
We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!”
So, an army of war chariots were in pursuit of them.
And here they are, their route of escape suddenly blocked,
stymied by a huge body of water and nowhere to run.
What they needed desperately was a lock like we had to hold
back the water and avoid ending their escape by the catastrophe of drowning in
a rough deluge.
Sherri Chasin Calvo in Encyclopedia.com tells us locks
appeared fairly early, mainly being used in canals and, “The first known canals
were dug in the Middle East thousands of years ago.” One example, she notes, is
familiar to all Bible readers: the “50-mile (80-km) long stone canal built to
supply the city of Nineveh with fresh water.” It was built, in fact, by “King
Sennacherib, who ruled Assyria” and who was eventually going to besiege Judah in
the time of King Hezekiah and capture 46 of its towns, demanding a huge tribute
in the late 700s to the early 600s BC.” We can read that account in 2 Kings chapters
18-19.
Further, “several additional canals were built elsewhere in
the Mesopotamian region, as well as in Egypt and Phoenicia. In about 510 BC the
Persian king Darius I (550-486 BC) even attempted to connect the Nile with the Red Sea.” So that would have been helpful for Israel, trying to go
through the Red Sea.
But, the problem here is that these dates are all about 500
years or so after the Exodus.
A similar problem surfaced with the flash locks, where water
built up and behind “movable barriers” or “lock-gates” like those developed by
the Chinese in the first century BC,” in canals near Nanyang,” wherein boats
could float over problems when the barriers were removed if going downstream or
hauled over the difficulty if going upstream.[3]
But that would be too little and way too late – by a
millennium!
So human-made locks were not an option.
They had no
bridges to cross, no ferry to carry them over, no locks to hold back the water.
But they had
one great advantage. They had the power of God at work.
Exodus
14:21-22 tells us that, at God’s command, Moses stretches his hand over the sea
and God drives back the water into a wall that opens a passage and God dries
that passage up, so Israel can cross over safely.
In short, God
creates a natural lock. No cement, no concrete, no sluices, but the inspiration
is there for humans to imitate it – but only the power of God is at work to
make it happen naturally.
But, how did God do this?
We have an explanation from no
one less than Sir Colin Humphreys, Professor at The School of Engineering and
Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London,
Professor of Experimental Physics, The Royal
Institution; Cambridge; and Director of both
Cambridge University’s Rolls-Royce University Technology
Centre on Advanced Materials and its Aixtron Centre for Gallium Nitride,
as well as Emeritus Professor of the Department of Materials Science and
Metallurgy at the University of
Cambridge.[4]
He is well-known for his work developing the LED lightbulbs we use and has
received many awards and honors, including being knighted for his
accomplishments in science.
Alongside Colin Humphreys’
expertise as a physicist and materials scientist, he has also become an
apologist in defending the miracles of the Bible.
In 2004, he released an interesting
book, The Miracles of Exodus – A Scientist’s Discovery of the Extraordinary
Natural Causes Underlying the Biblical Stories. In it, among other contributions,
is an impressive explanation of how God built overnight the natural “lock” that
saved Israel and destroyed the pursuing army.
Here is a
summary of some of the light this LED pioneer sheds on this event:
Noting Exodus 14:21, which recounts “all that night the Lord
drove the sea back with a strong east wind” (NRSV), he explains: “A wind
blowing along the surface of a body of water exerts a stress on the water which
forces it back.” Oceanographers call this a ‘wind set-down.’” Moses and the
Israelites were able to cross. When they all arrived, God ceased the wind, and the
sea rushed back with great swiftness and force onto the pursuing army. He
estimates that the height of the wall of water was about “800 metres.” At 1
metre to about 3.3 feet, that is roughly over 24 feet (re Exod.14:22). Sir
Colin also explains: “The mathematics shows that the water returns as a
fast-moving vertical wave called a ‘bore’.” Since this happens only on a long
stretch of water and the Bible specifies it was an east wind, Prof. Humphreys
focuses on the Gulf of Aqaba as the most probable location of the crossing and calculates
the speed of the returning “bore” wave to be about five metres per second, “sufficient
to knock over a horse and its rider and hurl them into the sea.”[5] Maps of the
area still show that the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Gulf of Aqaba are waters
that are all connected.
The Archaeological Study Bible adds an extra
point, “Humphreys also suggests that the name Red Sea could be accounted for by
the red coral that grows in the Gulf of Aqaba.”[6]
Therefore, as
our sleek and solid Viking craft was lifted by the power of the pouring water
to a new level, on which it could begin to move carefully at first and then
more swiftly out of each lock to continue up the Rhine River to our
destination, just so, the fleeing Israelites were rescued by God with an east
wind and led across the emptied deep to rise up and climb to a higher physical plane
on the far shore, while at the same time being raised up through this
experience to a higher spiritual plane.
Step by step,
we see that, when difficulties confront us, they can be solved by obeying God’s
command to follow God’s lead, seeking escape from the bad, and actively moving
toward the good solution God provides to get us out of as much of the misery
and trouble as we can.
As the
Israelites slowly had their consciousness raised to the power of God on earth, we,
the heirs of this great epic account we read in Exodus, should remember that, when
catastrophe hits us, as it often does, we are gifted by God to rise up to a
higher, farther shore. God leads us through the troubles mounted up around us, empowering
us to transcend the obstacles facing us and enables us to continue on our own spiritual
journey in the power of God’s grace.
So, what
should we do when catastrophe strikes?
1)
Don’t
despair at overwhelming problems.
2)
Ask
and listen for God’s leading to a solution.
3)
Act
on God’s solution:
a) Follow the Lord.
b) Seek the higher ground.
4)
Trust
God to protect you, because you are in God’s eternal hands.
5)
Don’t
let fear unnerve you or turn you back.
6)
Keep
pressing on.
Bill
[1]
This blog is an adaption of a sermon given August 18, 2024 at Pilgrim Church in
Beverly, MA.
[2] For those who want a parallel explanation, the
website of the Government of Canada’s Saint-Ours Canal National Historic Site
explains, “A lock usually consists of a watertight basin known as a lock
chamber, which is used to raise or lower the water level as required. Boats are
raised or lowered by filling or emptying the lock chamber. Gates at each end of
the lock chamber allow the boats to enter and leave. The gates are operated by
various hydraulic, electric or manually operated systems, depending on the
canal. Sluices in the gates or walls of the locks are operated to fill and
empty the lock chambers by gravity. https://parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/qc/saintours/culture/ecluses-locks , accessed June 30, 2024.
[3] Sherri Chasin Calvo, “The
Development of Canal Locks,” Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/development-canal-locks
[4] The Royal Society, “Sir Colin Humphreys CBE FREng FRS, https://royalsociety.org/people/colin-humphreys-11662/, accessed 8/11/20. The Royal Society, which is “a Fellowship of many of the world's most eminent scientists and is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence,” applauds Sir Colin Humphrys for his “valuable work on the electron microscopy of semiconducting materials,” and “his world-leading research on gallium nitride (GaN),” which has resulted in a substantially improved understanding of this important material with a wide range of technological applications.” As a result, the USA, along with Europe has awarded him gold medals for his work, and he was knighted by Great Britain’s Queen in 2010 for his contributions to science.
[5]
Acaemia.com: “Science and the Miracles of Exodus” by Colin Humphreys,
Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, University of Cambridge-
Cambridge, UK, https://www.academia.edu/75936355/Science_and_the_Miracles_of_Exodus. For
other explanations of what may have happened in the parting of the waters at
the exodus, see “Parting The Red Sea - Could It Have Happened? Wind Setdown
Model Says Yes,” News Staff,
Scientific Blogging: Science 2.0, posted September 2, 2010, accessed August 19,
2024|.
[6] “The Wind Set-Down Hypothesis,” Archeological
Study Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 111.
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