Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
There's an often overlooked aspect of the great third angel's message that creates a vacuum in our heart experience. Its absence nurtures lukewarmness--that vague sense of spiritual futility.
What's missing: the third angel's message is a Day of Atonement idea--something new in 6000 years of human history. It's the Good News of justification by faith in the light of the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary--glorious truth beyond what our dear brother Martin Luther (in all his godly sincerity) could grasp in his day.
One clear-thinking writer said that as the third angel pronounces his fearful warning in Revelation 14:9-12, he is pointing to the Most Holy Apartment of the heavenly sanctuary: "Here [is found] the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." They have "followed the Lamb" in His final ministry!
And the Bible supports that profound insight, because the whole of Revelation chapters 12 and onward is built upon the awe-inspiring change in the heavenly administration when the seventh angel blows his trumpet in chapter 11:15: "Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, 'The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ,' ... Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple" (vs. 19)--clearly, the opening of the final phase of Christ's high priestly ministry in the Most Holy Apartment.
In past ages, Christ's ministry was preparing people to die. What is He doing now? Preparing a people for translation at His second coming. Life now is serious business; let's cooperate with Him. As the same writer has said, Let's stop "resisting our Lord in His office work."
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: August 14, 2001.
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