Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Of all the books of the Bible, the last one is where the Son of God is featured repeatedly as the divine One crucified, "slain," that the world and the universe might live and not die. He is seen there several times as "a Lamb as though it had been slain," apparently helpless, yet introduced to John as "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David" who alone of all the inhabitants of earth and heaven "has prevailed" to take a mysterious book from the hand of the Almighty One who sits on the throne.
John knows that the book contains the destiny of every one in the universe, including ours. The future of eternity is at stake. Sin has threatened to turn heaven itself into hell. And it dwells in human nature.
John is overcome with anguish and cries uncontrollably because as our corporate surrogate he realizes that unless that "book" that seals the destiny of the universe can be opened, the very government of God is doomed. The "Lamb" alone can break its "seven seals" (Rev. 5:1-7).
In other words, unless the crucified One can prevail to open that book, we are all sentenced to die one minute after the world's midnight, like a lost man on Death Row who has failed in all of his appeals for clemency. To the relief of the anguished John acting in our stead, the crucified Lamb "prevails" to "take the book and open its seals."
How? He is the first being in the universe who dies to self, who "pours out His soul unto death," that is, the second death. The love that is agape has won the great controversy between Satan and Christ. That and not His physical might is the reason for everlasting praise to Christ!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: December 13, 2005.
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