People around the world are taking another look at the cross of Christ. The old hymn says that His cross "towers o'er the wrecks of time," but seldom has it been clearly understood. The terrible events of the Dark Ages that were done in the name of Christianity (such as the awful Crusades) could never have been done in the name of Jesus if those people had understood the cross, besides wear it around their necks. The shameful persecutions of Protestants by Catholics and those that were vice versa, could not have happened if Catholics and Protestants had understood what happened on the cross. The shameful religious strife that has brought sorrow to so many people even in the 20th century--all the result of a famine for understanding the truth.
When Jesus said that just before His second coming "this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations" (Matt. 24:14), He was talking about a revelation of the truth of the sacrifice of the cross. We read in Revelation 18 that "another angel" is to "descend from heaven, having great power, and the earth [is to be] lightened with his glory" (vss. 1-4). And Revelation emphasizes 25 times that the final light that lightens the earth with glory will be the revelation of Christ as "the Lamb."
One brief but clear example of how pagan error has crept into the Christian church to becloud the glory of Christ's cross is the doctrine of natural immortality--a teaching that is extra-biblical. It hides the reality that on His cross Christ suffered the horror of the second death (but His glorious agape-love triumphed over that experience of hell). There is a "length, and breadth, and depth, and height" of that love that has a far more powerful effect on human hearts than has been seen in our pathetic history for 2000 years. For Christ to win the final "election" in His great controversy with the enemy, there must come a clear and powerful demonstration of that same love in human hearts worldwide.
Copyright © 2009 by Robert J. Wieland.
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