Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
The last book of the Bible is clear: the only news God has for anyone at any time is Good News. The final message in Revelation 14 is "the everlasting gospel," which never means Bad News. But God cannot force people to believe His Good News; He "proclaims liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants" (Lev. 25:10). He wants everyone to be free, and everyone is free to believe His Good News, or to believe the author of Bad News, Satan. This freedom is bestowed upon the human race "in Christ," as His gift. But each human being must learn, be taught, His freedom. That teaching of freedom is the "gospel."
But Revelation also makes clear that there is a diabolical opposition to that "everlasting gospel," which is represented as the intoxicating "wine of Babylon" (14:8; 18:2). Thus we see a great conflict going on behind the scenes; it's impossible for Christ to be "revealed" in this last Book of the Bible unless at the same time the deceptions of Christ's enemy, Satan, are also unveiled. And the astonishing "revelation" discloses that his chief means of opposing Christ is through an organization, a message, a philosophy, that is professedly Christian. He has become a grand impostor, "so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God," when it's all a masterful lie (see 2 Thess. 2:3, 4).
Daniel's prophecy is of a "little horn" power that emerged in world history out of the ruins of the ancient pagan Roman Empire, that "speaks pompous words against the Most High, shall persecute the saints of the Most High, and shall intend to change times and law" (7:25).
One brief example of this frightful "Christian" deception: the pagan idea of the natural immortality of the soul was imported into the Christian Church; it forces people to believe that those who are lost at last must continue to live forever in conscious torment and agony in an endlessly literal burning hell, and the great conflict between Christ and Satan will never be resolved. Throughout all eternity Satan will still rule his kingdom ("hell") while side by side God rules His kingdom (heaven). This falsehood has been a curse to humanity, has made many people become infidels, and created vast cruelties. Its "author"? Babylon.
The point? Make sure the "gospel" you believe is purely biblical, unmixed with any Babylonian "wine." The "temple of God" where the impostor "sits" and dishes out falsehood could be closer than you think.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: October 19, 1999.
Copyright © 2014 by "Dial Daily Bread."
