Dear Friends of “Dial Daily Bread,”
The Bible is crystal clear: we are living "in the last days" (2 Tim. 3:1); "the time of the end" (Dan. 12:4); the time for us to "endure" until then (Matt. 24:13); the time when we are to "watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming" (vs. 42); the time when we are to "take heed to [our]selves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on [us] unexpectedly" (Luke 21:34). The "time of the end" is "today" (Heb. 3:13).
We are living in the very time described in Revelation 14:8 and 18:1-4 when "the present truth" (2 Peter 1:12) shouts in our ears that "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen," the very time when God calls to everyone whose heart has been stirred by the sacrifice of Christ on His cross, "'Come out of her, My people, lest you share in her sins.'" You simply can't enjoy the opulence and arrogant pride of "that great city" if you appreciate the atonement of Christ. You have seen "the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up" and have seen yourself as "unclean" in that light which streams from the cross (Isa. 6:1-5). If you are dallying in "Babylon," you are miserable. You want out.
What it boils down to is that we are living in that unique time of "the day of atonement." It's not the one literal day of the year that Jews observe as "Yom Kippur;" it's the grand original, the antitypical, cosmic, real "Day of Atonement" that was prefigured in the Israelite sanctuary services of long ago. Now is the grand time that the angel described to Daniel as "then the sanctuary shall be cleansed" (8:14). It has come on time after the 2300 "days," 2300 literal years, which the angel singled out as "the appointed time" to bring us to this "time of the end" (11:35; 12:4). It's the important time when Daniel said, "the wise shall understand" (12:10). It's the same time that Jesus spoke of, "Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man." It's a time to be awake for joy (Luke 21:36).
Around the world there are millions who are waking up; they believe that those 2300 years have expired as Daniel said. They see that the world is now in the ongoing fulfillment of Revelation 14, and has been ever since the early part of the 19th century (since 1844, to be exact, for the Bible prophecies are exact). This is the time when the great angel proclaims "to every ... tongue, and people, ... 'the hour of [God's] judgment has come'" (vss. 6, 7), the time for the greatest joy the world has ever known.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: May 5, 2004.
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