Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Suppose you get yourself into a relationship or a deal where you want to be loyal but your inner conscience tells you that something is not right? So you try to drown your conscience and plow ahead in what you think is faithful loyalty, even becoming a fanatic in your devotion. Finally the inner conflict becomes unbearable, and you must either yield to your conscience and break away from this falsehood, or end up selling your soul completely to evil. Reinhold Niebuhr said wisely, "Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure."
The Bible describes a final movement within human history when people will be forced by their honest conscience to re-align their loyalties. Revelation 15:2 tells how they have spent their past lives in loyal service to "the beast" and to "the image to the beast," and even loyal to the "number of the beast," but in the final realignment of loyalties must break away from the popular service of "the beast" and his cohorts and step out bravely on the side of truth.
In Revelation 15 John sees these people "stand on the sea of glass" having "gotten the victory" over their previous devotion to falsehood. That will involve tremendous personal sacrifice because chapter 13:15-17 describes how they must meet the most intense persecution Satan has ever directed against people loyal to God.
Large numbers of people right now are fighting battles of conscience in their inmost souls. Where can they obtain the strength and courage to do what is right? "They overcame [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb" (12:11).
Jesus had a battle with conscience that took Him to His cross. He alone can give them the strength they need.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 12, 1999.
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