Jamin Bradley

While Yahweh is the King of kings, Lord of lords, and God of gods, much of the New Testament narrative is about him raising Jesus up as Israel’s immortal human King, and then inviting the rest of the nations to leave their kings, lords, and gods behind and give their allegiance to Jesus. So yes, Jesus is King, Lord, and God regardless of if the nations choose him to be, but evangelism is more or less inviting the nations to make this truth actuality in their everyday lives—lest they stay with their old kings, lords, and gods.

As a consequence for their actions at Babel, God separated the world into nations by languages and appointed the “sons of God” to rule over them (Deuteronomy 32:8). These spiritual beings are known by many different titles throughout the Bible: gods, demons, princes, principalities, cosmic powers, and so on. Once the nations had been delegated amongst these little-g-gods, Yahwheh—the one true God—chose Abraham as his nation, whom he would use to eventually bring about King Jesus to bless the other nations with.

It’s possible that the little-g-gods were supposed to teach their nations how to worship Yahweh, but all we know is that they quickly became corrupt. In Psalm 82 God pronounces the judgment that one day these gods will die like men for their injustices against humanity (I imagine their death is in the hell-fire that Jesus says will destroy the devil and his angels in Matthew 25:41). Their corruption is further seen in a sneak peek of the spiritual realm in Daniel 10, where the gods of Persia and Greece are adamantly fighting against Yahweh’s wishes for Daniel.

The Bible shows a spiritual realm that has gone just as awry as the physical realm. Yes, there have always been people born into the nations of the other gods that have chosen to embrace the reality that Yahweh is the one true God—but for the most part, the nations need aid here. And so just as God disinherited the nations by their languages at Babel, so God returns the languages to the Christians at Pentecost and sends them out to re-inherit them. Yes, Jesus is naturally King of the cosmos and therefore all nations are subject to his judgment. But unless they choose to leave their false authorities behind and embrace Jesus as their true authority, they remain allied with the old gods and the kingdom that will die, rather than the true God and his eternal kingdom.