When you’re close enough to see the dog’s tongue – you’re close enough to be transformed into meat! If you are approaching someone’s door and suddenly the guard dog responds to your arrival, it is not always a pleasant experience. I recall seeing a dog flash his tongue at me. It was one of those nano seconds that lasted far too long and lingers in my memory to this day. The whetted tongue, the lunge, the piercing canine teeth, my bleeding arm and then the aftershock – shivering and shaking. Fortunately, the lady dog-owner pulled the phone away from her ear long enough to calmly and gently scold her sweet old collie: “Boy, stop! Don’t do that. Lay down!” I’m glad she so kindly interrupted the perpetrator or it could have possibly been Round 2 and more of my flesh! That was one time when my experience contradicted conventional wisdom that ‘his bark is worse than his bite.’ True, a barking dog is scary and frightening; but from personal experience a biting dog pushes the envelope further.

The Lord told Moses: “At the stroke of midnight, death is going to strike every home in Egypt – from the palace princes to the slaves who work the hand mills. There will be no exceptions. Every firstborn son, daughter, cow and pet will die. An unprecedented piercing cry from each Egyptian home will create a deafening crescendo through the night. But the children of Israel, will be sheltered, protected and preserved.” Moses then relayed this message on to Pharaoh. I wonder if Pharaoh scoffed when Moses confidently added this:

Dogs aren’t known for being quiet after dark when there is the least little stir in the house or some noise outside. In Egypt, where dogs were sacred in honor of their dog-god, the barking Anubis, canines were everywhere. So one would expect considerable howling, barking and biting in the streets the night all the firstborn died. But Moses told Pharaoh: “You might think all the dogs will go into attack-mode if any such thing happens at midnight. Let me tell you, we will be safe. Our God will protect His people, so much so that not even a dog will snarl or flash his wet tongue or bare his white fangs at us. You will know then that God puts a difference between us and you. There will be no question that night whose God reigns supreme!”

Dear child of God, just like the Children of Israel were sheltered by the blood on the night of the Passover, you are sheltered by the Blood. The Lord puts a difference between those who are IN Christ and those who are not. You are on the inside, safe, secure and eternally sheltered. If the Lord looked after the details back then of keeping dogs from barking and snarling against His people, He can look after you today. The Lord puts a difference between His children and those out in the world.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or peril or sword? …Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” Nothing, absolutely nothing, not one imaginable thing can “separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:33,37,39