Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
God's love for a lost, despairing world is seen in the message of three mighty angels who "fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach ... to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people," telling (1) that "the hour of His judgment has come," (2) that "Babylon is fallen," that is, apostate, fallen Christianity that should lighten the earth with truth but instead has embraced self-worshipping paganism in its heart, and (3) don't "worship the beast and his image, [or] receive his mark" (Rev. 14:6-12).
The first message, which arose on time just after the end of the 1260 years that came in 1798, was given its first public presentation in 1831. A tragic rejection by the entrenched Protestant hierarchies made the "fall of Babylon" message relevant by 1844, and the identification of "the mark of the beast" has been proclaimed ever since.
But note: these three great angels can fly only "in the midst of heaven," like helicopters flying over the treetops, but they are severely limited in their effectiveness. They use all the marvelous "increase of knowledge" provided by modern technology, satellite preaching for example; but straining their resources to the limit, they could preach on for hundreds of years more, frustrated in their best efforts unless "another angel," a fourth, comes "down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth [is] lightened with his glory, and he [cries] mightily with a loud voice ..." (Rev. 18:1-4).
The most poignant drama of 6000 years is seen in modern "Israel's" disdaining a "most precious message" when its "beginning" came in the closing decades of the 19th century. The result of that tragic unbelief has been the loosening of the grip of those "four angels" of Revelation chapter 7 who had been commissioned to "hold the four winds of the earth" until the sealing angels "have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads" (vss. 1-3).
In simple language, the Savior of the world has been frustrated in His purpose to bring to a triumphant close His "great controversy" with Satan. The next item on the agenda: repentance for God's own people.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: September 15, 2006.
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