Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

When Paul says we must “all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10), he does not denigrate what the apostle John says about judgment and agape. John says:

(a) “Everyone who loves [with agape] is born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7). The obvious implication: if we haven’t learned how to love with agape, we don’t know God. That’s what he says next:

(b) “He who does not love [with agape] does not know God, for God is agape” (vs. 7). Highest equation in the universe!

(c) “In this the love [agape] of God was manifested toward s us, that God has sent His only begotten Son ...” (vs. 9). We learn agape only by long beholding the sacrifice of Christ to the point that we don’t “know anything except Christ and Him crucified” (cf. 1 Cor. 2:2). The heart is won. Now the Lord Jesus wants an entire world church so enlightened by His agape, and so won by heart.

(d) “In this is agape, not that we loved God [with agape], but He loved us [with agape] ...” (vs. 10). His church does not take the initiative; the Bridegroom does that, and she does the responding to Him.

(e) “Agape has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world” (vs. 17). “Keeping the [ten] commandments” is preparation for the final judgment; but according to John, the one supreme question we will be asked as we stand before the Lord Jesus in final judgment will be, “Have you learned how to love (with agape)?”

(f) Paul agrees: “Love [agape] does no ill to a neighbor; therefore love [agape] is the fulfillment of the law” (Rom. 13:10).

All these many long years, the Bridegroom-to-be has longed for His beloved to “grow up” out of childhood unto “the “measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). We cannot duplicate the sacrifice of Christ on His cross, but we can learn to appreciate it. If any bridegroom has that from his bride, he will have a happy marriage.

Growing up should be great fun; kids love to do it, even before their time. A world church may appear to be very lethargic; but don’t make a superficial judgment.

The Bridegroom is not finished yet. Keep your heart alert to what He may do.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Does the Bible teach a “balanced” view of righteousness by faith, so salvation is 50 percent by faith and 50 percent by works? If that question is too easy, then is it 99 percent by faith and 1 percent by works?

It appears superficially—on the surface—that the apostle James says it’s 50/50 by both: “ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only” ( 2:24). He seems—superficially—to contradict Paul, for Paul says boldly that “by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: NOT of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph 2:8, 9).

When he says emphatically it’s “not of works” he means not even 1 percent. His impassioned Letter to the Galatians is on one side of the perennial debate: “I do not frustrate the grace of God [even 1 percent ‘works’ will frustrate that grace!]: for if righteousness come by law, then Christ is dead in vain” (2:21). There’s no “balance” between righteousness by faith and righteousness by works (Laodicean lukewarmness hot and cold water “balanced;” this confusion is Laodicea’s problem).

The apparent conflict (it troubles many) is resolved as clear as sunlight: salvation is TOTALLY of grace through faith, but the “faith” is not dead; it’s a living faith “which works.” Its fruit: obedience to all the commandments of God (Gal. 5:6). James is not pitting faith against works or vice versa; he pits a living faith against a dead faith. “Faith without works is dead”! Both apostles are totally agreed on that.

In modern language, “law righteousness” can be translated as “egocentric motivation.” Paul points us to Christ’s cross: in His sacrifice, was He motivated even 1 percent by egocentric concern for Himself? His assurance to the believing thief APPEARS to say yes (“Hang on, fellow victim; you and I will be in Paradise today!”). But that was in the morning when the sun was shining; “at the sixth hour there was darkness over all land” including the heart of the Son of God. He cried, “My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” He “poured out His soul unto death,” even the second (Isa. 53:12). Not even 1 percent of an egocentric motivation—totally love for us, none for Himself.

That was agape.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

The current excitement about the “Lost Books of the Bible” perplexes many. As time goes on, Satan’s deceptions become ever more puerile. There will “arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Matt. 24:24).

The present pseudo “discoveries” (for example, the “bones” of Jesus!) are an alluring temptation to people who want supposed “historical science” added to their faith. These “books” have a common thesis: to destroy confidence in Jesus as the true Christ of the Bible: His divinity and His purity of character. Consider, for example, His alleged sexual liaison with Mary Magdalene—a tale perfectly crafted to justify modern cultural engrossment with sexual immorality and infidelity.

The fundamental misperception that pervades all apostate thinking is natural immortality. This grand deception dredged up from ancient paganism is calculated to destroy the message of the special love of Christ. So cleverly has it been invented that the lethal false doctrine marches right into the once-sacred precincts of what Paul calls the “ temple of God” (2 Thess. 2:4).

If the human soul is naturally immortal, Christ could not have “died for our sins” (cf. 1 Cor. 15:3, 4), for the pagan-papal doctrine destroys the reality of any death that He could die. So blatant is the deception that one has to deny the most obvious of truths to embrace it.

Thus true Christianity squares off against the false on the battlefield of the doctrine of love: when the apostle John declares that highest of truths that “God is love,” he is not declaring that God is the childish self-seeking emotion we humans have assumed is “love”; he is saying that God is agape (1 John 4:8), an entirely different idea.

Agape is a love unheard of in the world apart from the revelation of Christ, a love that dares to go to hell in order to save us (Acts 2:27), that “empties” itself (Phil. 2:5-8), that “pours out [its] soul unto death”(Isa. 53:12), what the Bible calls “the second death” (Rev. 2:11; 20:12-14). It’s a love that “constrains” (motivates) the one who appreciates it, to live “henceforth” not for self, but for the One who went to hell to save us (2 Cor. 5:14, 15).

Long before the holy Sabbath was changed, the evil contestant in the great controversy sought to destroy this understanding of agape in the early church (cf. Rev. 2:4). The Protestant Reformation will not be completed until agape is restored and recovered. Its loss is the source of worldwide lukewarmness in the church.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Dial Daily Bread

ear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

“Who is Jesus Christ?”

This simple question has engrossed the minds of sincere theologians and pastors for the better part of several centuries. Whenever it is suggested that He is the Savior of the world, the Savior of every man, severe caution has been expressed: don’t slide into the evil doctrine of Universalism for the Bible is too clear that many will eventually be lost and go into the lake of fire after the second resurrection when they gather around the Great White Throne (Rev. 20:11-15).

So the idea has prevailed that Jesus Christ cannot be the Savior of every man unless every man first receives and believes Him. It’s only those who “believe in Him” who will not “perish,” John 3:16 says.

A few years back a prominent evangelist declared to young people worldwide that “Jesus wants to be your Best Friend,” but the idea is of course that He can’t be unless you open your heart, etc. (A very thoughtful, enlightened writer once wrote a book entitled Steps to Christ that said that Jesus Christ is already your Best Friend; then the publishers put out an edition for youth that said on the back cover, “Jesus Wants to be Your Best Friend.” This highly popular idea is intended to preserve the necessity of obedience to the law; true, no one persisting in willful disobedience to the ten commandments will be saved eternally; he couldn’t be happy!)

But there is not yet unanimity among theologians and evangelists as to who Jesus Christ is. They cannot embrace strict Calvinism that says He has predestinated some (“like the sand of the sea”?) to be lost eternally, and a few others to be saved eternally. (That idea has to be out.)

Hence an idea that rejects strict Calvinism—Jesus Christ is potentially “the Savior of all men” IF they take the initiative to elect Him to be so. Through the better part of several centuries this idea has prevailed.

But wait a moment. The problem is—therein lies the basic root of the idea that the sinner’s ultimate salvation is due to his own initiative; and there lies the source of the nearly universal lukewarmness that pervades the church in these last days (Rev. 3:14-21).

What the Bible has been saying all along is that Jesus Christ is already the “Savior of the world” (John 4:42), the Savior of “all men”(Rom. 5:18), the sinner’s Best Friend; but those who will be lost at last have chosen to resist and reject Him through unbelief; they have “frustrated the grace of God” (Gal. 2:21). This simple disclosure clarifies the theological conundrum.

The bottom line: repentance at last comes into focus (Rev. 3:19).

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

A California Highway Patrolman shoots herself after leaving a note, “I’m no good.”

If ever a prominent person had reason to think he was no good, it was great King David who committed two monstrous crimes at once in committing adultery and then murdering the lady’s husband and keeping mum about it all for about a year, deceiving everybody in the kingdom. It took a prophet from God to wake him up.

His reaction was not suicide, for he did frankly confess that he felt he deserved death—the real kind, the eternal death of being “cast ... away from Thy presence [of God]; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me” (Psalm 51:11). What he felt he deserved was what the New Testament speaks of as “the second death.”

The full realization of his true guilt was necessary before his self-respect could be built. No one can think of himself with genuine self-respect unless he knows the full dimension of his unworthiness and guilt—that’s just Reality; and that dimension? Guilt for the crucifixion of Christ. That is the sin of the human race; when the Bible says “all have sinned,” and “there is none righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:23; 10), that is what it means. Let’s not try to argue out of it saying, “If I had been there I would not have voted to crucify Him! I’m innocent of that!” You don’t know what you would have done, for “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9).

Your true and genuine self-respect that nothing can overthrow is built on that realization and confession. It is a corporate sin that is universal but universally (almost) unrecognized.

What this CHP suicide needed was that corporate realization plus the understanding that Christ’s forgiveness of those who crucified Him extended to her also (Luke 23:34); if your load of unconscious guilt is lifted by that faith and knowledge of truth, it will be impossible for you ever to say to yourself or to anyone else, “I am no good.”

Every baby born into this world comes with a deep conviction of judicial condemnation “in Adam” (Rom. 5:18); but at the same time he also comes into the world under a blanket of the Father’s judicial forgiveness with His verdict of acquittal “in Christ” (same text).

That’s what the Father says about you “in Christ.” But of course you can rebel and refuse to receive the gift. But believing the truth puts a smile on your face forever.

It’s a pity no one told the CHP suicide in time.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Just before His crucifixion, the Son of God made a promise: He will “draw” all men to Himself, that is, will reconcile all men to the Father, He will give all who are thirsty, to drink of the water of life, and He will give all who are hungry to eat of the bread of life, IF ... His people will lift Him up to be seen crucified for all men and crucified by all men (cf. John 12:32, 33).

Christ died for the world, the death that “every man” would die were it not that He gave Himself for every man, and yes, to every man.

All that the fallen Adam did to bring a condemnation upon every man, Christ as our second or “last Adam” did to bring a verdict of acquittal to the same every man. He reversed what Adam did; Adam cursed, Christ blessed; Adam brought us eternal death; Christ brought us eternal life.

Adam brought darkness, Christ brought us light. Adam alienated us all from God, brought us into the world separated from Him; Christ brought us into the world reconciled to Him IF we will receive His message of atonement. (He has already done the reconciling in principle.) He will force no one against his free will, but He says, “Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17).

“Whosoever will.”

That includes every Muslim who “will” let his heart “come.” They may have been taught to deny He died on His cross; but their conscience cannot deny that love for every man in that He died his second death. This truth of life only in Christ is free for all to believe. Those who choose to disbelieve, bring eternal separation upon themselves, while those who believe the News of His love already receive the gift of eternal life in Him.

The much more abounding grace of the Lord is stronger than mistaken information imbibed in childhood and youth; when the angel of Revelation 18 lightens the earth with glory, truth will cut through long held prejudice; God knows how to speak to His “other sheep ... which are not of this fold”(John 10:16), and they will hear His voice and their prejudices will disappear like morning dew. He will have a people who can lift up “Christ and Him crucified” and can reach those hearts.


Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

What message does the Bible tell us to proclaim to Muslims?

(a) “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus [the Messiah] whom Thou hast sent” (John 17:3).

(b) The “true God” [Allah, in Arabic] has revealed Himself as the One who Himself is “love” (1 John 4:8). But the word for love is agape, a different idea than we humans have and understand for love.

(c) Agape is the kind of love that loves our enemies and prays “for those who despitefully use us” (Matt. 5:45). That is the teaching of both the Old and New Testaments.

(d) We humans cannot understand it except as we see it revealed in Christ the Messiah, who “being in the form of God, counted not equality with God something to be grasped but emptied Himself and took upon Himself the form of a servant [a slave]; and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:5-8).

(e) That “death of the cross” involved His taking upon Himself all the evil and sins of the world and dying the death that is “the wages of sin” (Rom. 6:23), which is the real thing—“the second death” in which there is no hope of a resurrection (cf. Rev. 20:12-14). This is what it means that “He poured out His soul unto death” (Isa. 53:12). This is the true definition of the love (agape) which God says He “is.”

(f) The miracle that confirms the truth of the gospel is that this message of the cross when rightly presented converts selfish, cruel, worldly human hearts and people learn to be unselfish and to love others even as Jesus.

(g) The human heart is melted by the story of this truth of what Christ accomplished on His cross. As the second or “last Adam” He encompasses the whole human race in Himself; when He died, “we all” died with Him and in Him (2 Cor. 5:14); also, we were resurrected “in Him” and that says something to us—that love of Christ “henceforth” motivates us to live “not unto self, but unto Him who died for us and rose again” (vs. 15).

(h) God wants every person to be saved eternally who is willing to let God’s Holy Spirit enter his/her heart; by the Holy Spirit (1 Tim. 2:3-5). Christ is drawing every one to Himself. But we have been given freedom of choice; God refuses to compel anyone. He wants only free-willed disciples.

(i) If one does not resist that powerful grace that is unbounded, he will be drawn all the way in repentance and eternal salvation.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

“Conventional wisdom” says that if you follow Christ, your path is difficult; and if you follow the world, your path is easy.

But the Lord Jesus Himself says, “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light” (Matt. 11:30).

And for those who think they have a hard time in trying to follow Jesus or had to suffer opposition and persecution, He adds, “I will put upon you none other burden” (Rev. 2:24). He doesn’t want us to suffer torture!

Granted, He doesn’t force anyone to “take up [a] cross and follow [Him]” (cf. Luke 9:23), but He invites us to choose to follow Him into eternal life in the kingdom of God. He knows that we have inherited from Adam a sinful nature and how sin is contagious and habit forming; He knows that when His Father says that He “so loved the world that He gave” Him to be our Savior that we have an inward battle in learning to “believe in Him” (John 3:16). Unbelief (or dis-belief) is natural for us; we were born that way. We can learn to believe.

The distraught father of the possessed boy in Mark 9 gives us a lesson. When Jesus told him frankly, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes,” he broke down in tears and said, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief” (vss. 23, 24). Steeped in your natural unbelief, you can choose to believe. Then you will learn.

A new birth is needed every step of our way, but the Good News is that He loves us so much that He actually makes the path to eternal ruin a “hard” one. This again is contrary to “conventional wisdom” that says it’s easy to just slide down hill into hell. An example of truth is what the Lord Jesus said to Saul of Tarsus as he was indulging his natural hatred of righteousness in persecuting the church. In love for his soul, the Lord confronted him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (Acts 26:14). It was a miserable life Saul was leading!

The Old Testament also teaches that God loves us so much that He has put obstacles in the downward path to ruin: “Behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns” (Hosea 2:6), “He has fenced up my way that I cannot pass” (Job 19:8), “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps” (Prov. 16:9), “He has blocked my way with hewn stone” (Jer. 3:9).

None of these Good News texts says that the Lord forces anyone to be saved against his will; but taken together they assure us that He continually tries His best to direct us into the path of life. Let’s believe Him!

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Please forward these messages to your friends and encourage them to subscribe. The "Dial Daily Bread" web page resides at: http://1888message.org/dailybread/

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

The Lord Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world (John 4:42). But what does He save the world from? What is salvation? Is it merely a physical resurrection, carrying on the same existence which we now have, with new bodies? Or can we say that salvation is deliverance from the sin that plagues our present life?

And if we have not known what that deliverance from sin is now, will we be able to enjoy any kind of a “resurrection”?

We humans are not “saved” by being delivered utterly from “the flesh,” but by receiving power to rule over the clamors of our “flesh.” The “much more abounding grace of God” actually “teaches” us to “deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, [that] we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present evil world” (Titus 2:11, 12). This is to rule over all the evil tendencies and desires of “the flesh” which we have inherited from our fallen head of our human race, Adam. We humans do not develop character by being delivered from the realm of temptation, but by receiving power to conquer all the temptation.

That is salvation.

The Savior does not try to save us in a way that would leave us limp and characterless, by putting us in a place of no temptation; no, He came to us humans just where we are, in the midst of all our temptations. He came in the very flesh such as we have and in that flesh He met all the temptations known to that flesh and conquered every one of them right up to the moment when He cried “It is finished!” on His cross and bowed His head and died.

By means of that conquest, He has brought victory over the flesh to every soul in the world who will open his heart to receive that “faith of Jesus.” Hot-house tree plants that have never been outdoors and never known cold and wind are helpless to endure real life and can never develop into strong trees; the Savior of the world is busy as our great High Priest “saving” a people who will be happy meeting Him face to face when He returns, who will not be ashamed in His personal presence. They must not be surprised that temptations assail them, or that trials them. That is evidence that the High Priest is actually working on their case! Good news!

Let Him work!

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Former U. S. President Jimmy Carter has stirred the ire of the Israelis by what he says in his latest book which speaks in defense of the Palestinians in their conflicts with the State of Israel. Carter is highly respected throughout the world for his devotion to justice and his efforts to help the poor and powerless.

He does not deny the history of the Holocaust as do some voices in the Middle East (it can’t be denied!), but he maintains that suffering the horrors of the Holocaust does not give Israel the moral right to deny justice to the Palestinians, or to destroy their neighbors, like Lebanon.

What has happened de facto is that Israel has virtually become the 51st state of the United States of America, and the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches invoke for her God’s special favor. This has created what Islam regards world-wide as their righteous jihad indignation. The result: a new threatened reign of world terror, Iraq just the precursor.

What does Jesus have to say to us now? Plenty, especially in Matthew 24, Luke 21, Mark 13, Daniel and the Revelation, yes, the Bible en toto. We have come to the “last days” of this world; we are in God’s great final Day of Atonement. Jesus likens our current history to the figure of “the sea and the waves roaring,” “distress of nations with perplexity, men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken” (Luke 21:25, 26). Our national leaders of both political parties in America are “distressed.” No one knows what to do now to extricate ourselves from our entanglement in Iraq and widespread jihad hatred.

And here in America, the prudent stay where they are so much as possible; the experience of Jet Blue’s recent horror stories of being cooped up in a jetliner for six to ten hours—that’s a miniature hell on earth in the midst of our opulence. Fortunate people today are not those in mansions within gated communities, but humble folk living in the country where they can grow a little food and thus acquire “food and raiment, therewith [to be] content,” as Paul says (1 Tim. 6:6-8).

But not to shut ourselves away from the needs of the multitudes. In vision, John “saw another angel come down from heaven, ... and the earth was lightened with his glory and he cried mightily with a strong voice” proclaiming the pure Good News of “the everlasting gospel” (Rev. 14:6-12; 18:1-4). That describes God’s people personally proclaiming the message themselves, doing more than playing videos; doors will open everywhere for flesh and blood proclaimers; but they must first themselves understand and appreciate that “everlasting gospel.”

Only those who “hunger and thirst”for it can be filled (Matt. 5:6).

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.