Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
The “Da Vinci Code” movie is stirring some Christian churches like Mel Gibson’s “Passion” movie. Pastors and elders feel that their Christianity is threatened by it and they are making heroic efforts to counteract the devastation that they fear the movie will make to the faith of their church members. One pastor in
The big question that attracts attention again is sex. But this time the assumption is that Jesus Himself has given the world a divine example of giving in to self-centered, lustful sex—exactly what the enemy in the great controversy between Christ and Satan wants for the world. The same media that focuses on the idea that Jesus “married” Mary Magdalene is reporting on the horrific ravages of AIDS worldwide; Newsweek devotes an entire issue to what AIDS has done as a plague—40 million “cursed” by it. As George Wills has said in an earlier Newsweek article, promiscuous sex is very often the means of infection. Now if the Enemy can spread abroad the idea that illicit sex is what Jesus gives His blessing to, think of the massive tragedies yet to afflict the world through distorting and twisting the Bible.
But the Bible is clear: Mary Magdalene’s “seven devils” were far worse than simply going to bed with the wrong men, even for hire. Fierce, mortally bitter resentment against a man who had betrayed her had flooded her mind until devils possessed her soul seven times over. The serious extent of her captivity is defined by the fact that Jesus had to pray for her to be delivered seven times! Six times His earnest prayers in her behalf had been frustrated—there was only partial deliverance (this is an encouragement to all of us when our prayers don’t get their full answers!). Finally there was that seventh prayer and the last evil angel was cast out of her soul and she was free (cf. Mark 16:9; Luke 7:36-47).
Yes, in purity Jesus loved the soul of Mary Magdalene in exactly the same way that He loves your soul. The love of Christ delivers from sexual infatuations; it is infinitely more powerful. “Close your heart to every love but mine; hold no one in your arms but me. Love is powerful as death; passion is as strong as death itself..... Water cannot put it out; no flood can drown it. But if anyone tried to buy love with his wealth, contempt is all he would get” (S.S. 8:6, 7, GNB).
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