“Whatsoever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it be diligently done for the house of the God of heaven: for why should there be wrath against the realm of the king and his sons?” (Ezra 7:23).
This decree, given to Ezra the scribe by Artaxerxes, the emperor of Persia, is one of many rather surprising acknowledgments in Scripture by pagan idolaters that the true God is the God of heaven. Abimelech, of the Philistines, and Pharaoh, in Egypt, are also examples (Genesis 21:22, 41:38). Balaam, the false prophet of Mesopotamia, recognized that the God of Israel was omnipotent (Numbers 22:38). Nebuchadnezzar, the mighty king of Babylon, was forced to “praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and His ways judgment” (Daniel 4:37).
The nations of the world and their leaders long ago, however, “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things” (Romans 1:23) preferring to worship and serve the creature more than the Creator. They are “without excuse,” since the very creation reveals the Creator (Romans 1:25, 20). They instituted the religion of pantheism, replacing the Creator with nature, denying any real creation, and this soon led to polytheistic idolatry, the worship of natural systems and forces in nature, personified as various gods and goddesses.
Nevertheless, they have always known in their hearts that there really is a God of heaven who created all things and who, therefore, will someday come in great wrath against all who reject Him. This is no less true for today’s modern evolutionary pantheists than for the idolatrous evolutionary pantheists of antiquity, for they are all guilty of the same foolish sin. “For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens” (Psalm 96:5). HMM
