Psalms 96:3 – “Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people.”
Over the course of time, somewhere in the thousands of years since the Bible was penned, society has changed the context behind the word ‘heathen.” Ask anyone on the street, and they will most likely tell you that a heathen is someone to avoid, shun or ostracize. “Heathen” has become synonymous in popular culture and Hollywood with barbarians ad uncivilized brutish peoples. Those generalizations and lack of distinctions in society have influenced Christians by changing the way that we interpret this word while reading the Bible.
A heathen is not a fur clad warmonger from the uncultured wilds of a forest. A heathen is simply a person that is unacquainted with God. They may worship falsely because of their lack of knowledge of God, but that is because they have never been informed of Jehovah (The Living God). Billions of people across the globe, and tens (if not hundreds) of millions of Americans are heathens; but the vast and overwhelming majority of them are ignorant of that fact. By definition, you cannot know that you are a heathen. It takes a believer to share their faith in order for a heathen to understand that their religion is empty and that their god(s) were merely carved by the hands of vain men.
Look outside your window, at the people in the cars next to you in traffic, at group of children boarding school buses … there are heathens everywhere in our daily life. In today’s quagmire of false religions and demonic deception, a large number of heathens have been falsely taught about our God and have been doubly blind to the fact that need to become acquainted with the Savior at Calvary.
Therefore, that begs the question: How do you open the eyes of the heathen to the existence of a REAL and Almighty God in Heaven? That’s simple, declare the realness of God in your life.
Heathens are often religious, but the deities which they bow before are powerless, deaf, blind and dead. They seek for the power and presence of God but have been ensnared with dogmatic ritual and false doctrine. So, declare unto them how real God is in your life. Share with them how God has made His glory known unto you. Proudly proclaim the wonders that you have seen fall from the hand of God.
You can never know that what you have is empty until someone declares that they have been made full. When God speaks to you in the Bible, share that with someone. When a prayer is answered, declare it to a heathen that is searching for answers. When a message is delivered by the Pastor and God uses it to impact your heart, share that with a heathen that thinks “church” is nothing but a monotonous bore.
Christians have, for too long, have assumed that if someone uses the name of Jesus or claims to believe in God that they are pursuing the one true God, Jehovah. Doesn’t the Bible say that there will be many who will claim to have done many things for Christ, but will be cast into the Lake of Fire because they were heathens that worked in iniquity? Debate with a heathen over doctrine will profit little. False religions have always tried to make the followers of their religion wrongly associate their personal identity with the false religion. If brazenly walk into Catholic church and proclaim that praying to Mary is idolatry, those people in attendance will perceive that bit of biblical truth as a personal attack upon themselves. In their eyes, you attacked them, not the doctrines of the Roman Catholic founders. There is not difference in their mind between what the “church” teaches and who they are as a living soul.
Confrontation will not open their eyes. Leaving them to find their own way to Christ is impossible. Only the realization that God presence is real in someone else’s life will make them realize that their life is empty. So declare all that God does for you to those around you. Take your worship of God outside the sanctuary and show they world how God is still just as powerful today as He has ever been. Declare, with all that is within you.
Your fellowservant in Christ,
Bro. Jordan Foster
Comments