Daily Bread

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Under the New Covenant, everywhere we turn we face a happy thought: the gospel is better good news than we have assumed. It’s true even in the Lord’s Prayer that we re-prayed yesterday:

(a) “Our Father in heaven.” He loves us too much to coddle or encourage us in popular feelings of spiritual arrogance (the “rich and.... have need of nothing” complex, Rev. 3:17). “What son is there whom a father does not chasten?.... We have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?” (Heb. 12:7, 9). If you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you thank Him for His discipline.

(b) Those times when we have imagined He was against us, when mysterious troubles and even heartaches overwhelmed us, were evidences of our Father’s special attentive love. Two of His New Covenant promises are: “I will.... make your name great; and you shall be a blessing” (Gen. 12:2). Our Father cannot give us those blessings unless He has disciplined us first! All this apparent punishment we have endured “yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11). Yes, perk up! He leads you.

(Time out for a moment: in case anyone wonders, are those Genesis 12 promises actually the New Covenant? Read Galatians 3:8; 4:24-27.)

(c) “And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matt. 6:13). If you think you are not as pretty as someone else, or as super-manly, you are being “led” out of “temptation,” exactly as you have been praying for all along! The Lord can slow you down for a moment and flash into your memory when He has “delivered” you from stumbling into some “horrible pit” (Psalm 40:2). An example: the “pit” of entanglement with a “strange woman” [or strange man!] (Prov. 22:14; 23:27). Regarding that particular “pit,” we read, “He who is abhorred of the LORD will fall there.” We have enough to rejoice about to keep us smiling for many days! He loves us!

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Suppose you don’t know what to do, you don’t even know how to pray. You can kneel, but you don’t even know what words to use.

Now’s the time to pray the Lord’s Prayer. It’s just inside the New Testament. Put it into the first person singular:

“My Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name” (Matt. 6:9; Jesus said, “In this manner,.... pray.” No matter who you are, or how unworthy you are, you are given the right to walk in past all the holy angels to the throne of God with these words). Save me from bringing disgrace on Your name.

“Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (vs. 10; let me do or say something today that is right).

“Give me this day my daily bread” (vs. 11; and the inexpressible joy of being satisfied with what my portion is of either the temporal or spiritual kind). Thank You for my portion!

“And forgive me my debts,” (vs. 12a; that is—my sins). This credit card debit is a constant load I can’t carry; oh, to breathe free again! Please teach me to say no next time I go to the mall; and yes, to say no to self all day.

“As I forgive my debtors” (vs. 12b; that means I practice self-denial until I pay my credit card balance; at the same time I pay my debt of forgiveness to those who have wronged me personally and painfully. It hurts, but yes, I do).

“And do not lead me into temptation, but deliver me from the evil one” (vs. 13a; any temptation to any sin is greater than I have the strength to endure, of myself. Thanks that at last I know the truth).

“For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” (vs. 13b; thanks that at last I realize it’s not mine).

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Sunday, June 04, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

In many hearts around the world there is an interest in “the Elijah message” which is God’s promise in the last two verses of the Old Testament. He says, “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Mal. 4:5, 6).

That’s a clear-cut promise. God’s honor depends on its fulfillment.

We turn the page, and we’re into the New Testament. There immediately, before we are even introduced to Jesus the Messiah, we meet up with “Elijah” in the vision given to Zacharias. God is in a hurry to fulfill that promise! Zacharias’ son John the Baptist is to “go before [the Christ] in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of.... the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord’” (Luke 1:13-17). Later Jesus tells His wondering disciples not to wait any longer for the promised “Elijah,” for he has already come in the message and ministry of John the Baptist (Matt. 11:7-14).

But conscience arrests us at that point: John the Baptist’s day was not “the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” That’s due now! Any lingering doubt we may have is removed by the realization that the “curse” the Lord alludes to in that last verse of Malachi hovers over us. Everything comes together: (a) the “Elijah message” is that of the great “other angel” of Revelation 18:1-4; (b) it’s the final “everlasting gospel” of 14:6-15; (c) it’s the powerful repetition of “the fall of Babylon” of vs. 8; (d) it’s the “witness” of the Lord Jesus to “the angel of the church of the Laodiceans,” the last of the seven churches of history (3:14-21); (e) it’s the call to “be zealous therefore and repent”; (f) finally, it’s the appeal of the Disappointed Lover in the Song of Solomon to His Bride-to-be to consummate the long-delayed “marriage of the Lamb” (19:7, 8). (g) And we add—Elijah reconciles her heart to Him!

It’s time for us, the “ten virgins,” to stay awake (Matt. 25:1-13), time to “follow the Lamb wherever He goes” (Rev. 14:4, 5), time for a new dimension of closeness to the Son of God.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Friday, June 02, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

The financial world has been jolted by the guilty verdicts handed down to the two top executives of the giant Enron Corporation. Unless their appeal changes the verdict, they are headed to prison for life. To simplify the case, they have been convicted of bearing false witness and of virtually stealing the livelihood of thousands.

It began as merely extra clever “business,” no intent to steal or lie. According to the court, it became a slippery slope.

But some related good news has evolved from the scholastic studies of some who have investigated the original Hebrew language of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. The familiar “thou shalt nots” are in fact the simple indicative future tense of the various Hebrew verbs; they are not imperatives; in the original, they are not “commands,” but simple promises.

But like all of God’s promises, there is the one fundamental fulcrum on which the promise turns—faith to believe the promise. God may give us a gigantic gift, but if we refuse it we deprive ourselves of the benefit. His giving us the gift does not force us to receive it! That’s up to us.

That fulcrum in Exodus 20 is the Preamble to the Ten Commandments: “I brought.... you out of.... the house of bondage” (vs. 2); that is, I saved you!

But the cost of His saving us was—His own death. Yes, our second death.

The cross of the Lord Jesus Christ is in that verse 2; let your proud, worldly heart be broken, melted, by that realization. Let your insensitive heart appreciate “the width and length and depth and height—to know the love [agape] of Christ which passes knowledge” (Eph. 3:18, 19); then God says, I promise—you will not fall down that slippery slope of stealing, or lying, or even to stumble into coveting your neighbor’s goods, or even his wife.

If prison eventuates for these two once-powerful corporation magnates, thank God it’s not the end of the road. The lesson of that grand Preamble is worth a lifetime’s learning, even in prison!

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

(a) The world is living in God’s grand Day of Atonement (Dan. 8:14, etc).

(b) There is danger that modern “Israel,” the Lord’s church, may repeat the history of ancient Israel’s Baal worship in the days of the prophet Elijah. This would necessitate Elijah being “sent” to us again.

(c) The need for “Elijah” is unprecedented, for we are living in the time when the Lord Jesus Christ wants to come in His second coming. He has to come for He promised to do so; but He doesn’t dare come personally until His people are ready lest they be consumed by the “brightness of His coming” (2 Thess. 2:8; sin cherished deep cannot endure His personal presence; those who cling to it perish with it).

(d) Now is the greatest problem the Lord has had since the flood of Noah. “As the days of Noah were,” says Christ, of today (Matt. 24:38, 39).

(e) Hence the need for “Elijah” to be “sent.... lest [the Lord] smite the earth with a curse”(Mal. 4:5, 6; in the Bible, God takes the blame for what He does not, or cannot, prevent). The “curse” would be the transformation of the planet into one vast “Baghdad” or “Darfur.” Continued moral degradation leads to something like that.

(f) “Elijah’s” work is to “turn hearts” of family members—miracles of much more abounding grace (cf. Rom. 5:20). Almost everywhere one turns there are divorces developing, even in the Lord’s church. Jesus asks a pathetic question, “When the Son of man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). Well, yes, some....

(g) But how can a church proclaim a message that “lightens the earth with glory” (Rev 18:1-4) unless it demonstrates those miracles of grace in “turned hearts”?

(h) Elijah’s patience lasted three years and a half; then came the final test at Carmel and the Brook Kidron for those who persisted in unbelief.

(i) But oh, wait.... God will again send the “fire from heaven” at the new “Mt. Carmel,” unmistakable evidence of grace abounding. The last thing God wants is another Brook Kidron!

(j) Thus He will hide “judgment,” lest the sound of its approaching footsteps may conquer by fear the heart that must be won only by love.

(k) That’s why Jesus says “they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day” their probation closed in Noah’s day (Matt. 24:38). “Good times” will continue alluring, deceptive, right up to the day our probation ends. We must not expect the Lord to force us into His kingdom.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Thursday, June 01, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Queen Jezebel outright hated the prophet Elijah, but King Ahab probably feared him more than hated him. She was a non-Israelite; her hatred was that of the wicked world against Christ. Ahab was capable of feeling guilty for his fear. The mass of the people were bewildered; not one (with the possible exception of Obadiah who hid some of the Lord’s servants in a cave) had the courage to stand with the holy prophet of the Lord. Everybody except Elijah trembled on Mt. Carmel. The air was charged with tension.

Well might we all tremble today as we inexorably approach our rendezvous at our last-days “Mt. Carmel.” It will be a preview of the last day of Judgment, when the apostle John says we shall all be judged by the one indispensable question: “Have you learned how to love (with agape)?” (Yes, read 1 John 4:8: “He who does not love [with agape] does not know God.”) The newly-sent “Elijah’s” mission will be teaching God’s people how to love: “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers” (Mal. 4:5, 6). That’s his primary task, not administering lethal judgment.

Elijah’s mission will be the greatest love-and-reconciliation-building ministry ever performed on earth since Pentecost. Satan can perform physical miracles (he is a very qualified orthopedic or cardiac surgeon), but reconciling alienated human hearts is a greater miracle (a five by-pass in the operating theater may not bring husband and wife together again. Only “Elijah” can do that one; but that’s what he has come to accomplish, and if we condemn him like Jezebel and Ahab did and stubbornly disregard the fire that falls at “Elijah’s” prayer, then must come the “Brook Kidron, 1 Kings 18:40).

Elijah was very patient for 3-1/2 years; then came Carmel and the end of patience forever. God is infinite, but His patience is not. Let the one who trembles find comfort in Psalm 130. What makes one really “fear” is the awareness of His forgiveness!

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

People around the world are deeply interested in “Elijah” being sent to us. They are realizing that “he” will come as a message, just as “Elijah” came to Israel in the message of John the Baptist (Mal. 4:5, 6; Lkuke 1:13-17).

They see that as John the Baptist prepared God’s people of his day for the first coming of Christ, so “Elijah” in these last days will prepare a people for the second coming of Christ (Rev. 14:6-15).

John’s message was a clarion call for repentance (Matt. 3:1-8). In these last days, “Elijah’s” message is a call to the leadership of Christ’s last days’ church to “be zealous therefore, and repent” (Rev. 3:14, 19; the “angel” of the church of the Laodiceans has to be its leadership). In ancient Israel, Elijah zeroed in on the top, the leader of the nation, King Ahab.

Just as Elijah was “zealous” and called on king and Israel to “repent” of their Baal worship and return to the true LORD (just as Jesus calls on Laodicea), so the Elijah message today will call upon God’s people to “examine [themselves] as to whether [they] are in the faith. Prove yourselves” (2 Cor. 13:5).

That must mean a close re-examination—do we understand what God’s holy Word says about justification by faith? Or have we repeated ancient Israel’s century-long slide down the slippery slope into Baal worship—that is, counterfeit ideas of popular Christianity that Revelation says are “Babylon”? “Test yourselves to see if you are in THE faith,” says Paul in the Greek; don’t be confused and bewildered by Babylon’s false version.

That genuine “the faith” will be Elijah’s message: (a) He “slays” the recalcitrant, unrepentant modern “priests of Baal” (which is the same as the “perishing” of those who disbelieve in John 3:16; the “should not perish” is in the middle voice of the Greek verb meaning those who disbelieve commit their own spiritual suicide). (b) Elijah proclaims the reconciling, “at-one-ment” message that heals the wounded hearts of those who appreciate Christ’s cross.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Monday, May 29, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

The news is plastered all over the media: the jury has found Ken Lay guilty on all six counts of conspiracy and fraud when he was head of the giant Enron Corporation.

I think I have never read such vilification of anyone in the media. One columnist: “Normally I am a ‘bleeding heart’ when it comes to long prison terms, but an appropriate sentence for the Enron boys might be six trillion years.” I don’t remember anyone has postulated that much even for Osama.

We wouldn’t comment except that our readers will be interested: Ken Lay has been studying our special series of 33 “Glad Tidings Bible Study Guides” and has been writing personal letters of appreciation to one of our Dial Daily Bread readers. (I am glad that this personal contact has been made. Of course I must make clear: Ken Lay’s study of our gospel lessons has been subsequent to the events for which he has been condemned.)

No question, terrific wrong happened in the Enron crimes.

But the question comes up: Is it possible that someone who has been legally condemned for crime can sense a hunger for God’s forgiveness that can lead to salvation in God’s kingdom? All that was stolen must be returned—of course; the amount was “$6 trillion overall,” the editorial says. (But Lay’s sitting in jail six trillion years wouldn’t reimburse those who lost.)

The editorial says there are many “corporate titans and financial con men who got away.” Yes, many such: “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you!” James 5:1 also refers to “Elijah the prophet” whom the Lord is sending with a message of healing and reconciliation for alienated hearts (cf. vss. 1, 17; Mal. 4:5, 6). If we already see a spectacular case of judgment being executed on the “rich,” can we expect the blessed salvation message from “Elijah” also to come soon?

“Elijah” will “lift up” “Christ and Him crucified” for sinners, clearly and powerfully, beyond anything in all past history (John 12:32, 33; 1 Cor. 2:1-3).

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Friday, May 26, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

This weekend a special conference of alert Christian people is gathering in a small church almost hidden in “the wildwood” in Northern California. They study the significance of the “Elijah message.”

You remember the last two verses of the great Old Testament where the LORD declares: “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” But Elijah’s work will be different than the popular idea of a stern disciplinarian who chops off the heads of the prophets of Baal. He will minister a message of reconciliation: “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” That of course cannot be unless he also “turns the hearts” of husbands and wives, and love will be reawakened.

Such “turning hearts” is what the word “atonement” means; here is God’s prophecy of the greatest ministry of heart-reconciliation the world has ever known since the days of Jesus. Elijah’s message is the solemn call of the great antitypical Day of Atonement that closes the work of Christ as the world’s High Priest. It’s the “Loud Cry” of the angel of Revelation 18.

Then the next event on God’s agenda is the close of human probation and the second coming of Christ. That will be the day which to those who have rejected this heart-reconciliation will be “the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”

But the one heart that most needs “turning” is hers who figures as the Heroine in the drama of Revelation 19:7, 8—the alienated “Bride-to-be” of the Lamb, whose “marriage” has been long delayed due to her heart coldness toward Him. It’s a world church that hasn’t yet learned to recognize her own identity, to see herself as she appears pathetically on the stage of the universe.

The scholars and leaders of such a world church have long debated how the heart of such a massive corporate “body” can be “turned” and melted in personal but also corporate contrition. Let’s not be unbelieving; unbelief here becomes the sin of the ages. “Elijah” will do what seems impossible.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Thursday, May 25, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

No matter where we turn in the Bible, we meet someone who suffers what we moderns call “depression.” The Psalms of David are a prime example. There is one entitled, “Out of the depths I have cried to You, O LORD” (130:1); that’s the powerful name that just saying it humbles one’s heart). Then in verse 2, David begs, “Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.” He does not get immediate relief for he adds, “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits” (vs. 5).

David’s problem that makes his depression painful is guilt: “If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (vs. 3). The Holy Spirit has been speaking to him, whose first work on David’s heart is the conviction of sin, and it’s painful. If we trace that conviction to its source, we come to Calvary—where Jesus prays the Father to forgive those who crucify Him. Then we realize that it’s us He is praying for! Not the Jews or Romans.

We have two wonders unfolding here: (a) the wonder of God’s redeeming love, and (b) David’s deep unworthiness that now he realizes. Therefore, “there is forgiveness with You,” he says, “that You may be feared” (vs. 4).

The Prince of sufferers from depression is the Lord Jesus Christ; see Him in Gethsemane. His disciples, even Peter, James, John, couldn’t even give Him an hour of their precious human time without going to sleep on Him (Matt. 26:36-40). He “began to be sorrowful and deeply depressed” (the KJV says “very heavy”). How “heavy”? “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.” Have you ever been near there?

And we know that Jesus never sinned; therefore we must conclude—to be “depressed” is not of itself sin. It’s human, and Jesus the Son of God became human, the Son of man. He took into His soul all the depression that all humans have suffered, cumulative, corporate, and bore it, “even unto death,” the final God-forsaken kind of hopeless death when He cried out in those “depths,” “My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

Kneel with Him in Gethsemane; but you can’t endure that death. Even suicide isn’t close; He won’t let you suffer the second death! Not even share or taste it ever so tiny—without you sharing also with Him His resurrection.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Someone has wisely told me I must not leave Abraham without seeing him through his grand final victory. It is true that he had failed miserably in his (and Sarah’s) unbelief that let them fall into the Old Covenant. While God had given them the New Covenant promise of having a “child of promise” (Isaac), they had disbelieved and assumed they must “work,” themselves, to help fulfill it—hence, Hagar and Ishmael (Paul says they ARE the Old Covenant! See Gal. 4:22-25).

Finally, after decades of heart-bitterness even while they were having daily family worship and doing their Sabbath-keeping, Sarah allowed her unbelieving heart to be melted in repentance (see Heb. 11:11). Let the gynecologists argue it out: her new and different feelings about God made it possible for her to get pregnant, and “by faith Sarah received strength to conceive.” All this time, they were “one flesh” and so Abraham shared the repentance with her.

Isaac came, well named—“laughter.” Grew to be a most delightful teen, the joy of their hearts.

Then the bomb, when Abraham was old and weak: the same voice of God that had made the promises now told him to offer the beloved son as a sacrifice on a hill to be known as Calvary (Gen. 22:1, 2). The years of bonding went further than if he’d been told to do this when Isaac was a baby. Sarah couldn’t take it. Father roused Isaac, left without telling her goodbye (vs. 3).

That 3-day safari was the longest and saddest Abraham had ever taken. But when puzzled Isaac quizzed him, he expressed no Old Covenant despair as we would do probably. Instead: “My son, God will provide Himself a lamb.”

A shining tribute to “Christian education”: Isaac then joined in the willingness of the sacrifice. He had learned to believe the New Covenant promises.

Note: Abraham didn’t actually kill Isaac with his knife—but he made the full commitment to make the sacrifice. “You have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me,” said God” (vs. 12). It reflected Christ’s cross. Christ didn’t go into the literal Lake of Fire, but He made the full commitment, and thus He died the equivalent of our second death. (Let’s say “Thank You!”)

Now Abraham has finally earned his title, “father of the faithful.”

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Question: Why do so many people who go to church suffer from depression just like so many people who do not go to church?

Answer: For the same reason that Abraham’s free-born descendants let themselves become slaves in Egypt. They became entangled in Old Covenant thinking, and the apostle Paul at last had the keen insight to see that their Old Covenant thinking even is what “gives birth to bondage” (Gal. 4:24). It was God’s intention to renew to them at Sinai the glorious liberty of New Covenant experience—He had promised it to Abraham; but their slave-mentality at Sinai they brought with them from Egypt instinctively drove them to choose again the Old Covenant experience. Their bodies were free but their minds were still in bondage.

God had promised Abraham, “‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:5, 6). But newly delivered Israel at Sinai did not so “believe in the LORD.” They responded with a firm self-righteousness: “Then all the people answered together and said, ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do’” (Ex. 19:8). They didn’t believe God’s promise as Abraham did (at first); they made their own promise. (Even he fell back into this slippery Old Covenant in his affair with Hagar and Ishmael—hence modern Palestine today)

Thus God’s true people at Mt. Sinai fastened themselves in their own home-grown Old Covenant; God did not lead them into it. Their national history thereafter all the way to a cross outside Jerusalem’s wall where they murdered their holy Messiah was the up and down, revival/backsliding syndrome. Every revival such as that even of King Josiah (2 Chron. 34, 35) ended as did his with 36:14-16, “till there was no remedy,” and the “City of peace” with its glorious holy temple had to be burned. The pagan Babylonians took the people off in captivity for 70 years.

Paul’s conclusion: Learn from your history! “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free” (Gal. 5:1).

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Monday, May 22, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Of all people in the world, the last one you would expect to be living in the darkness and bondage of the Old Covenant is Abraham, “the father of the faithful.”

And God had already given him the sunlit promises of the New Covenant! (Gen. 12:2, 3). His taking Hagar for a second wife was entirely Sarah’s foolish, unbelieving, Old Covenant idea. God had nothing to do with that foray into darkness. Nonetheless, Abraham plunged into it. Paul says that the Hagar chapter of Abraham’s life was pure Depression—“this Hagar is mount Sinai,” which because of unbelief, Israel turned into Depression. These “things are symbolic,” says Paul in his clear understanding, in Galatians. The covenant “from Mount Sinai.... gives birth to bondage,” which is always the horror of Depression (read Galatians 4:21-31).

Some 430 years after Abraham, God tried to renew those bright New Covenant promises to Israel as they had come out of dark Egyptian slavery on their way to the Promised Land (Ex. 6:4-9). But Israel were Abraham’s descendants who had to learn as he did the folly of Old Covenant promises. Likewise, God had nothing to do with Israel embracing their Old Covenant ideas at Sinai. He wanted to renew the same New Covenant with them (see Ex. 19:4-6), the same promises He had made to Abraham.

We lock ourselves into confusion if we try to interpret the covenants at Mt. Sinai in any other way. Israel’s slavery in Egypt had been a massive case of national Depression. Would God at Sinai lead them back into that darkness? If we picture the character of our loving heavenly Father as One who deliberately led His people Israel into an Old Covenant spiritual bondage at Sinai, we distort His character. The Old Covenant was not a preliminary step toward national salvation—that’s twisting little text snippets with our own pre-set Old Covenant philosophy. Yes, He ratified their choice with animal blood; only in that sense can it be said that He “made” the Old Covenant with them—because that was what they insisted on. He had to let them take their long detour “under the law” until they could come to the place to be “justified by faith” as Abraham was (Gal. 3:19-24).

Now, you can believe today and skip all the Depression!

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Sunday, May 21, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Seven times Abraham is spoken of in Romans 4 as “our father.” He had to wait until nearly 100 for the birth of his first son, Isaac, the one “promised.” Can you imagine the years of depression he and Sarah endured—waiting “against hope,” who still “believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations”? Abraham learned that “God.... gives life to the dead, and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations..... He did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith. Giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform” (vss. 16-21).

Our “father” Abraham became an expert in battling with depression. The New Covenant promises are what brought him through into the sunlight. The New Covenant promises given to him and thus to all his descendants (you and me!) are in Genesis 12:2, 3. To say glibly that they are the “cure” for our widespread malady of depression is to be superficial; they are not to be compared with this or that drug developed by the pharmaceutical companies; they are simply “the faith of Jesus.”

But they are included in the “everlasting gospel” of Revelation 14:6-12, and it is our privilege to live in their sunlight every day of our lives.

We want to examine those seven promises that God made to Abraham. And see how they apply to us. Tomorrow if the Lord wills, we shall do so.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Friday, May 19, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

It’s a very widespread malady—depression. Even many who sincerely want to follow the Lord Jesus Christ suffer from it. Physicians are trained to treat it, books written about it, institutions exist where sufferers can be treated, huge economic losses come because of it, the wealthy endure equally with the poor—perhaps more so. Even little children are given medications to correct it.

How does the Holy Spirit relate to it? Medical scientists who do not recognize His existence can rely on drugs and psychology in efforts to treat it. Even in the church there is widespread depression that pastors are at a loss to relieve. Many people find that jokes, funny stories, amusements, a social whirl, are helpless bandaids.

Depression is the condition that Jesus describes in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” But often the way seems blocked, and we wrestle with nagging doubts about whether “coming” can really help. Aren’t committed Christians also “heavy laden”? Doubts plunge us back into the pit.

Depression afflicts multitudes, and right here is an acid test of “the faith of Jesus.” The shadows are dark and heavy; can we let in a ray of sunlight?

(1) The first work of the Holy Spirit is to “convict of sin” (John 16:8). When He is resisted, depression is created—unless we cut our spiritual vagus nerve and create a soul-lobotomy (the final sin against the Holy Spirit). Some then find endless carefree abandon, because He is gone.

(2) The one truly sinless Man in history suffered the most enormous depression of any human—crying in an ultimate heart agony, “My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). Yet that depression was not personal sin on His part. There have been faithful followers of Jesus who have suffered depression—Joseph sold as a slave into Egypt, David persecuted by King Saul (his psalms are healing medications), the prophet Jeremiah, et al. It could be a hidden blessing.

(3) The faith of Jesus gets slighted (as relief from depression) because many pastors cannot distinguish between the Old Covenant and the New. Time’s up; the Lord willing, we may probe a bit into that tomorrow. The New Covenant is not mere psychology; it’s honest truth.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

The “Da Vinci Code” movie is stirring some Christian churches like Mel Gibson’s “Passion” movie. Pastors and elders feel that their Christianity is threatened by it and they are making heroic efforts to counteract the devastation that they fear the movie will make to the faith of their church members. One pastor in California has given away 350 iPods full of sermons opposing “Da Vinci.”

The big question that attracts attention again is sex. But this time the assumption is that Jesus Himself has given the world a divine example of giving in to self-centered, lustful sex—exactly what the enemy in the great controversy between Christ and Satan wants for the world. The same media that focuses on the idea that Jesus “married” Mary Magdalene is reporting on the horrific ravages of AIDS worldwide; Newsweek devotes an entire issue to what AIDS has done as a plague—40 million “cursed” by it. As George Wills has said in an earlier Newsweek article, promiscuous sex is very often the means of infection. Now if the Enemy can spread abroad the idea that illicit sex is what Jesus gives His blessing to, think of the massive tragedies yet to afflict the world through distorting and twisting the Bible.

But the Bible is clear: Mary Magdalene’s “seven devils” were far worse than simply going to bed with the wrong men, even for hire. Fierce, mortally bitter resentment against a man who had betrayed her had flooded her mind until devils possessed her soul seven times over. The serious extent of her captivity is defined by the fact that Jesus had to pray for her to be delivered seven times! Six times His earnest prayers in her behalf had been frustrated—there was only partial deliverance (this is an encouragement to all of us when our prayers don’t get their full answers!). Finally there was that seventh prayer and the last evil angel was cast out of her soul and she was free (cf. Mark 16:9; Luke 7:36-47).

Yes, in purity Jesus loved the soul of Mary Magdalene in exactly the same way that He loves your soul. The love of Christ delivers from sexual infatuations; it is infinitely more powerful. “Close your heart to every love but mine; hold no one in your arms but me. Love is powerful as death; passion is as strong as death itself..... Water cannot put it out; no flood can drown it. But if anyone tried to buy love with his wealth, contempt is all he would get” (S.S. 8:6, 7, GNB).

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Robert J. Wieland’s timely book about Mary Magdalene dispels the confusion over her role in the life of Jesus. The author refers to his work as a “modest essay, concerned only with what comes to light in the Four Gospels.” A small book of 64 pages that you will want to read it at one “sitting.” Includes a Bible study on “The Woman the World Can Never Forget.” Glad Tidings Publishers, (269) 473-1888; www.1888msc.org.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Please forward these messages to your friends and encourage them to subscribe. The "Dial Daily Bread" web page resides at: http://1888message.org/dailybread/

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Monday, May 15, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Lord, I feel sorry for You tonight.

A sheltered child, I sleep secure, content;

No swordlike, piercing pain of tortured folk

On lonely sickbeds stabs my sovereign skin;

I sense no anguished dread in dying hearts.

No tattered waifs from Africa besmudge

My windows with their dirty hands, or peer

Inside with hungry eyes that plead for love.

Yet they crowd 'round Your windows looking in!

No cursed untouchables from Bombay streets

Beg leave to make my lawn their bed tonight.

I hear no heartsick sob in vice-cursed haunt,

Nor curdling scream of suicides dark leap,

Nor soldier's pain-racked gasp in alien land.

I sense no shock of riven flesh in crash

On bloody road. I cannot even surmise

The reason for my next-door neighbor's tears!

But through the starlit hours You may not sleep.

You dare not look the other way, avert Your gaze.

You sense each twitch of pain, and count

Our sighs, Yours the helpless agony

To feel our universal tragedy.

Lord, I feel sorry for You tonight—

But is there something I might do to help?

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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