For I will at this time send all My plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like Me in all the earth. Exodus 9:14
In November of 1914, at a memorial service in Devon, England for a soldier killed in the fighting in France, someone read part of a letter from a chaplain who was with the soldiers fighting at the front. The unnamed chaplain spoke of the spiritual attitude of those soldiers and declared, ‘We have no atheists in the trenches’. The reality of impending death and the war’s constant bullets convinced those men that there is a God and they should be ready to meet Him. We don’t find anything like that attitude around us today. Most of those around us may not be atheists, but they are certainly apathetic. Whether there is a God or a judgment to face never enters their thoughts. Not yet.
Today’s text is God’s message to Pharaoh that the king’s earlier declaration ‘I know not the Lord’ is about to change. When God is finished with him, Pharaoh will know about God. When the devastation and death of the plagues have run their course, Pharaoh will be dead, but he will not die an atheist. Those godless souls around us may not make such arrogant declarations as Pharaoh did, but their apathy and indifference shout in defiance ‘I don’t care if there is a God’. Every way they enjoy the blessings of abundance, opportunity, and safety from a gracious God, and they don’t care. Untold times they encounter the Gospel through a word, a message, or the testimony of a true Christian, and they shrug. For now.
Think about Romans 14:11 ‘For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God’. And turn to Philippians 2:10-11: ‘That at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’ If not in time, certainly at the Great White Throne, atheism and apathy vanish. Forever. -Jim MacIntosh
Here is the link to the video of this message: https://youtu.be/xFeoSf-6EOc