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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