Crystallization Study of Exodus 7.1

The Red Sea was the baptistery in which the children of Israel were baptized. Hence, after they were baptized in the Red Sea, they were brought into resurrection. According to Exodus 3:18 and 5:1, Moses told Pharaoh to let the children of Israel go so that they might make a journey of three days into the wilderness and there sacrifice to the Lord their God and hold a feast unto Him. This journey of three days signifies resurrection. This means that it is in resurrection that the people of God were separated from Egypt. Hence, the wilderness is a realm of separation...[and a] realm of resurrection.... Baptism brings us into resurrection. As soon as a believer is baptized, he has the sense that he has been brought out of the old realm into a new realm, the realm of resurrection. Romans 6:4 says that, having been baptized into Christ, we should walk in newness of life. No doubt, to walk in newness of life means to live in the realm of resurrection. According to the type in Exodus, this realm is the wilderness of Shur. Thus, the wilderness of Shur is a type of the realm of resurrection....It also signifies a realm of separation. When the children of Israel entered into this realm, they were separated from Egypt both by the Red Sea and by the wall.

[In Exodus 15:22] the children of Israel “went three days in the wilderness.” Since three is the number of resurrection, this signifies that they walked in resurrection, that is, in newness of life. It is significant that the journey from the Red Sea to Marah was exactly three days, not two days, four days, or even three and a half days. According to a note in the text of the Amplified Version, the distance from the Red Sea to Marah was thirty-three miles. Surely the children of Israel could have walked this distance in less than three days. We must believe that the pace of their travel was under God’s sovereign leading and control. The fact that they traveled for three days is a portrait of walking in resurrection. When the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they certainly walked in a way that was different from the way they walked in Goshen. In Goshen they did not have the pillar of cloud, but in the wilderness they walked according to the guidance of this pillar. They were led by the Lord’s presence to walk in a new way. (Lifestudy of Exodus, pp. 347-348)