The Lord Sends Plagues of Frogs, Lice, and Flies upon Egypt—Despite These Plagues, Pharaoh Hardens His Heart and Refuses to Free the Israelites
See Exodus 8:1–32
President George Q. Cannon said:
“It is an easy thing to deceive the senses; we see it every time our theatre is occupied by a magician—we see things done that hoodwink our senses. Our eyes are deceived; our ears are deceived; all our senses are deceived by shrewd, cunning men, by men who are experts in manipulating various articles, and if they were to set themselves up as the apostles of some system and declare that these were the evidences of the divinity of that system and we should believe this sort of evidence, we might be converted to error.
“All those who are familiar with the Bible know the experience of Moses before Pharaoh. There was scarcely a miracle that Moses wrought that the magicians of the king did not imitate, and every miracle that was wrought only tended to harden the heart of the king and make him determined that he would not let the children of Israel go; so we see that miracles in and of themselves are no evidence of the divinity of any system, nor of the power and the authority from God of the men who work them [see Exodus 8:1–32].”
(Gospel Truth: Discourses and Writings of George Q. Cannon, sel. Jerreld L. Newquist, 2 vols. in 1 [1987], 153.)
