Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
We must learn about (1) the most oppressive despair humans have ever known and (2) the most explosive joy that followed. We shall never lighten the earth with the glory of a fully developed "everlasting gospel" of Revelation 18 until we taste (2). And no one can ever know that until first he has known (1). The story is all in the last chapter of Luke.
Every hope that humanity is capable of knowing has been fulfilled in Jesus the Nazarene. He has proven Himself to be the Son of God; the Eleven have confessed Him so. They and many other "witnesses" have seen the coming of the Messiah. Even the Samaritans have seen in Him "the Savior of the world." "The hopes and fears of all the years," all 4000 of those years, were "met" in Him. What Abraham and all the prophets had longed to see the Eleven have seen.
"We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel," lamented Cleopas and his friend as they trudged despondingly to Emmaus (Luke 24:21). Like a sudden avalanche, the most horrible things have suddenly happened to the Son of God; He has been murdered by the leaders of the one true church, the "chosen people," Israel. Can you begin to grasp how the followers of Jesus feel? They are "us" in a corporate sense; yes, we are one with them. We identify.
The sun has been blackened out of our sky! Not only is the Messiah dead; He has been humiliated, despised, by the most hateful, Satanic rejection the universe has ever witnessed. No way can this have happened to the Son of God! The horrible thought intrudes on our conscious or unconscious minds--could we have been deceived? Yes, say the leaders of the one true "church" on earth--Israel. The Pharisees, the Sanhedrin Council say, You've been fools to believe this charlatan. (It's easy to learn that you are a sinner; what hurts is to learn you're a fool.) Number (1) is unspeakably painful.
Then this Stranger draws near to the two. Kind, gracious. He gives them a simple Bible study: "Beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself" [the world's Savior] (vs. 27). "Ought not the [Messiah] to have suffered these things?" (vs. 26). Why, the cross fits perfectly as the crowning demonstration of God's validation of Jesus of Nazareth!
Wisely, the risen Savior doesn't tell them in words who He is; He simply reveals Himself. Then the two race back to tell the Eleven in Jerusalem.
Human hearts virtually explode with joy. All the devils in hell can't stop these "witnesses" from telling the story everywhere. Do you share the joy?
--Robert J Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 11, 2003.
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