Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
The 16th century Protestant Reformation was a glorious movement of emancipation from Dark Ages, papal thinking. The freedom to think biblically had to precede political and social freedom. All during those Dark Ages God had a "remnant" church who preserved her liberty of conscience while having "fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days [prophetic years]" (Rev. 12:6). These were faithful Bible-believing and Bible-preserving saints; they lived secluded in the mountains of southern France and northern Italy, who sent out their young people as missionaries to spread knowledge of the true gospel among the common people. They prepared the way for the grand Reformation of Luther.
Finally, came full deliverance from papal darkness with the end of those 1260 years in 1798 and the near simultaneous discovery in many lands of the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation; "the time of the end" had begun. Then in swift succession came the discovery that the world is now living in God's grand antitypical Day of Atonement. The time has come for that fully understood "gospel of the kingdom" that Jesus declared must be "preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, [before] the end will come" (Matt. 24:14). That's exactly where we are now in the progression of God's gift of time.
The understanding of the gospel that the saints had in the 16th century was great for their day; but now comes that paradigm shift that transcends both Calvinism and Arminianism in the recovery of justification by faith. Heaven's glorious goal is the ripening of "grain" for "harvest." "One" must be seated on a white cloud thrusting in His "sickle" to reap the harvest of the earth (Rev. 14:14, 15). That is the second coming of Jesus and the final translation of His people with the closing act of the heavenly drama: the great controversy between Christ and Satan will be at last ended. First, that "grain" must "ripen" for harvest.
Could we be just about there? At last the world is to gather before the cross of Calvary to "comprehend ... what is the width and length and depth and height--to know the love [agape] of Christ which passes knowledge" (Eph. 3:17-19). At last the full-fledged gospel is to "lighten the earth with His glory" (Rev. 18:1-4).
The world will be catalyzed into two camps--those who welcome the full "comprehension," and those who reject it. The little girl who was the flower girl at the wedding, caring only for the cake and ice cream, will now grow up "to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13) to where she appreciates the Bridegroom for what He is (cf. Rev. 19:7, 8). She will become the "Lamb's wife," who has at last "made herself ready" for the "marriage of the Lamb." Time's nearly up. We're just about there!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: January 7, 2007.
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