Dear Friends of “Dial Daily Bread,”
Will the time ever come when the majority of the world's inhabitants choose to honor and glorify Christ by believing "the everlasting gospel"?
The parable He told of the unjust judge and the importunate widow suggests the answer is “No”`: Jesus asks, "When the Son of man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8). Abundant testimony in the Bible tells of Satan leading the world's population into bitter rebellion against Christ with the enforcement of "the mark of the beast" (compare Revelation 13, for example).
How then can the faithful followers of Christ honor Him and glorify Him in the close of the great Day of Atonement?
The great controversy between Christ and Satan will finally be victory for the Lamb of God, but it will not be settled by a majority vote of earth's inhabitants, except as they vote to judge and condemn themselves. What will happen in the final events as we know them will presage the Judgment before the Great White Throne when the books at last are "opened" and all mankind are "judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books" (Rev. 20:12). Those who will have come up in the second resurrection at the end of the 1000 years will be in “number as the sand of the sea" (vs. 8).
But the total number of those who in the closing of the world's history will be totally loyal to the Lamb will be only "144,000," says Revelation 14:1-5, although 7:9, 10 gives encouragement for those who believe that it is a symbolic number, and the zoom lens reveals an actual count of "a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues." This sounds more like the fruitage that the sacrificed Lamb of God deserves to have!
All we know for sure is that the group who "follow the Lamb wherever He goes," in whose mouth "was found no guile," who are "without fault before the throne of God," grants to Him to "see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied" (Isa. 53:11). He deserves that vindication! And those who finally choose to rebel will judge and condemn themselves; the final vote that will vindicate Christ in the great controversy will be totally unanimous--even Satan will be bowing and confessing that truth.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: April 28, 2007.
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