Every rainy winter we in California see the same heart-breaking pictures: luxurious homes built on shifting foundations sliding down, even into the Pacific Ocean. (But yes, while they lasted, the owners had glorious views.)
This must have been a common sight in Jesus' day for He draws a lesson from it. He likens those who build a house of religious belief on falsehood to those who build a mansion on a sand dune with an ocean view. They are "foolish," He says (Matt. 7:24-27). Note, He doesn't call them "wicked."
This introduces us to one of the most pathetic and tragic aspects of church life: sincere, devoted people who can't tell the difference between Bible truth and fanaticism. They are not wicked people, they don't rob banks or commit adultery, but they spin wild theories out of Bible texts wrested from common sense contexts. Almost every church, no matter how small, seems to have one (or more) of these fanatics who keep beating their drum. They hit their pay dirt mostly in misconstruing Daniel and Revelation. There is a solid-rock, common-sense understanding of those prophecies, and it developed in the Great Second Advent Movement of over a century ago. The rain and the storms of opposition have "beat upon that house" and it has "fallen not."
But every departure from that clear-cut prophetic truth has resulted in a "house built upon the sand," and as "the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; ... it fell." It has left the fanatics looking "foolish." But fanaticism is a psychosis that doesn't mind the acute embarrassment of appearing naked and foolish before the world and before heaven!
To change the metaphor, Revelation 16:15 says, hang on to your clothes; all those nightmares you've ever had about appearing naked in public will be fulfilled unless you study Daniel and Revelation and know for sure what is that bed-rock foundation of truth. Heaven's Weather Service says the storm is on the way.
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 9, 1998.
Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.
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