Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
For those of us who live in California, it is good news that we are at last getting rain and snow. For the past few years, due to drought, our State governor has been pleading with us to conserve water.
We are reminded of a precious promise the Lord God made to all of us on Planet Earth after the great flood of Noah: "I will never again curse the ground for man's sake; ... nor will I again destroy every thing living as I have done. 'While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease'" (Gen. 8:21, 22). We take this for granted and think nothing of these common blessings.
But don't forget the flood of Noah. Jesus told us that in the end of time, humanity would again become as sinful as was that race of antediluvians in Noah's day. Our world today has just about reached that divine limit that the Lord has set.
We thank the dear Lord for giving us this promise! No, Planet Earth is not to become waste and deserted. The Lord created it for a purpose: "Thus says the Lord, ... who is God, who formed the earth and made it, ... who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited" (Isa. 45:18).
Jesus will come again as He promised (John 14:1-3); then the 1000 years of Revelation 20 will begin, at the end of which the Lord will re-create the earth and make it new again, only this time without the possibility of sin ever coming in to pollute it (see Rev. 21:1-5).
Our "beloved brother Paul" says this is our "blessed hope" (Titus 2:13); but he can't bring himself even to say this much without reminding us that Jesus "gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed" (vs. 14). That means that He died our second death--so infinitely great was His love for us!
There is the heart of the "third angel's message" of Revelation 14 that prepares a people to be translated when Jesus returns. Cling to that "blessed hope."
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 14, 2009.
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