Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
The biggest, most important word in any language is the word l-o-v-e.
But it's not the ordinary word of every-day language: it's the word that the inspired apostle John used when he said that "God is love," not that God's characteristic is love, or that part of Him is love; no, John wrote that "God IS love" (1 John 4:8).
John wrote that "God is agape." It's the word that turned the world upside down when the magistrates of the city of Thessalonica complained that "these [men] that have turned the world upside down are come hither also" (Acts 17:6).
Not that two puny men could do that; what they were preaching was so powerful that the message did it; and the message was encapsulated in that word agape. It was a totally radical idea: true love, the real thing, is a love that loves bad people, ugly people, mean people, yes, your enemies.
It's probably impossible for us to imagine what happened before the day of radio or TV or any flashing electronic news that encircles the world in a moment. The news that startled people went out worldwide: when Jesus of Nazareth was being crucified, He prayed for the men doing it: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). The one Gentile author of one of the Gospels was impressed to tell this detail, which none the Jews, Matthew, Mark, or John, recorded. The news went around the world by word of mouth. Never in the history of Roman crucifixions (which were many) had a crucified victim of this unspeakable cruelty prayed for his murderers. This was NEWS!
People talked about it everywhere. The News catalyzed humanity: there were those who despised the divine Victim; there were others whose hearts were deeply impressed and solemnized. Like the honest-hearted centurion that Luke has to tell us about, they said, "Truly this was a righteous man" (vs. 47).
In the end of time the world will again be lightened with a message that turns it upside down, a message that grips some hearts and reconciles them to God and to His holy law; and that goads others to enforce the "mark of the beast" against them. This will be the message of a fourth angel of Revelation 18:1-4 that brings to a triumphant conclusion the work of Christ's gospel; the message of the three angels of chapter 14 doesn't accomplish that great work; it can't.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 16, 2008.
Copyright © 2012 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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