If you have ever watched the TV series Highlander, you will know it’s about a group of immortals who are empowered by an energy called the Quickening and who cannot be killed unless they are beheaded.
One by one, they fight each other to the death and the oft-repeated theme of the show is, “There can be only one!”
Meanwhile, each immortal absorbs the Quickening energy from other immortals when they behead them and the last immortal will be so powerful he can enslave humanity and rule the world.
And again, the line that intrigued me was, “There can be only one!”
You and I believe in and worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph as the one, true God because, “There can be only one!” The “re-imagining movement” mocked Christians because we only have one God while they worship many gods, but as Ecclesiastes warned us, “There is nothing new under the sun!”
Thousands of years ago, God’s people were living in an Egypt with lots of gods controlling almost every aspect of their lives. And they looked down on the Israelites who only had one God until that one God challenged 10 of their gods using 10 plagues and John retells part of that story.
“The first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth. Terrible and painful sores appeared on those who had the mark of the beast and on those who had worshiped its image.”
— Revelation 16: 2
Right out of Exodus, this is the sixth of 10 plagues in Egypt attacking Isis as as the god of medicine and Sekhmet as the goddess of disease. And, like the final seven plagues in Egypt, it does not affect God’s people.
“Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea. The water became like the blood of a dead person, and every living creature in the sea died.”
— Revelation 16: 3
Right out of Exodus, this is the first of 10 plagues in Egypt attacking Nu (“the watery one”) as the god of the watery abyss by killing every sea creature. Then the story continues as the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph attacks and destroys the false gods of Egypt, because “There can be only One!”
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist Church in Thomasville, Ga. With wife, Mary Ella, they are missionaries to the Navajo Reservation.
