Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Many people are deeply interested in "Elijah" being sent to us. They are realizing that "he" will come as a message, just as "Elijah" came to Israel in the message of John the Baptist (Mal. 4:5, 6; Luke 1:13-17).
They see that as John the Baptist prepared God's people of his day for the first coming of Christ, so "Elijah" in these last days will prepare a people for the second coming of Christ (Rev. 14:6-15).
John's message was a clarion call for repentance (Matt. 3:1-8). In these last days, "Elijah's" message is a call to the leadership of Christ's last days' church to "be zealous therefore, and repent" (Rev. 3:14, 19; the "angel" of the church of the Laodiceans has to be its leadership). In ancient Israel, Elijah zeroed in on the top, the leader of the nation, King Ahab.
Just as Elijah was "zealous" and called on the king and Israel to "repent" of their Baal worship and return to the true Lord (just as Jesus calls on Laodicea), so the Elijah message today will call on God's people to "examine [themselves] as to whether [they] are in the faith. Prove [themselves]" (2 Cor. 13:5).
That must mean a close re-examination--do we understand what God's holy Word says about justification by faith? Or have we repeated ancient Israel's century-long slide down the slippery slope into Baal worship--that is, counterfeit ideas of popular Christianity that Revelation says are "Babylon"? "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith," says Paul in the Greek; don't be confused and bewildered by Babylon's false version.
That genuine "the faith" will be Elijah's message. He "slays" the uncooperative, unrepentant modern "priests of Baal" (which is the same as the "perishing" of those who disbelieve in John 3:16; the "should not perish" means that those who disbelieve commit their own spiritual suicide).
Elijah proclaims the reconciling, "at-one-ment" message that heals the wounded hearts of those who appreciate Christ's cross.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: May 29, 2006.
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