SPECIAL MESSAGE TO WGM TEAM MEMBERS:
April 9, 2024
THIS SPIRITUAL DISEASE IS NOT HOPELESS – Part 28 (No. 10)
“Knowest not that thou art wretched.” Rev. 3:17.
The prophesied, not foreordained nor predestined, decline of the initially ardent and zealous believers in the advent movement, into the dangerous comfort zone of self-confidence, mostly unintentional, has betrayed them into already feeling “safe and sound” in the excellence of the Biblical soundness of their doctrinal beliefs as being consistent and true “to the faith once delivered to the saints”(Jude 3), is, in fact, happening at the worst possible time period—during the pre-advent, Investigative Judgment, and when a “woe,” not a blessing, has been pronounced “upon the inhabitants of the earth and sea, for Satan has come down with GREAT WRATH upon us “knowing he has but A SHORT TIME” (Rev. 12: 12).
This particular Satanic wrath finds its deadliest, most fiendish and soul-destroying form in the temptation of DECEPTION, the same one he deployed in heaven and the same one he employed in Eden, causing the corresponding fall in each occasion.
While it is true that “there is safety in numbers,” that is, in true spiritual unity and harmony, the exact opposite is starkly true on its flip-side, as attested to by both sacred and secular history, which is, there is even “greater danger in numerical superiority” because the “truth as it is in Jesus and the tested true and faithful followers of God on earth, have, since the beginning, always been found in the minority.
This continues up until the final, living “church triumphant” emerges, as revealed in the parallel passages of Revelation 7:1-8 and 14:1-5, the latter a natural continuum of Rev. chapter 13 preceding it, whence “the beast, its image, mark, name, and number” are revealed.
Described as the second of the six manifestations of end-time lukewarmness, this “wretchedness”, like all the rest, is spiritual in nature, a moral character issue; hence, individual eternal destinies are at stake. To ignore or belittle this diagnosis is self-deception that ends in self-condemnation—a wretched state indeed!
Quite interestingly, in the KJV or Authorized Version, “wretched” appears only twice, and “wretchedness” only once in Num. 11:15. In the former, Paul confessed in his yet-unconverted condition, “O WRETCHED man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24).
“Wretched” here is the untranslated Greek talaiporos, “enduring trial, i.e., miserable,” the same word used to describe the Laodicean condition. The word “miserable” is also used very sparingly, three times only in the Bible, Rev. 3:17 and 1 Cor. 15:19 both the Greek eleeinos, meaning “pitiable.” In Num. 11:15 we read Moses plaintively pleading with God as he singularly deals with a burden the size of a murmuring, stubborn Israel: “I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me. And if Thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray Thee, out of hand, if I have found favor in Thy sight; and let me not see my WRETCHEDNESS.” Num. 11: 15, 16. (Read the whole chapter as a parallel to Exo.16 and see for yourself what Moses had to put up with for 40 years. No wonder the Bible anoints him as “the meekest of all men.”
“Wretchedness” here is the untranslated Hebrew “rah,” meaning “bad or evil; adversity, affliction, distress, calamity, harm.”
For Jesus to describe the Laodicean to be both “miserable” and “pitiable”’even without yet considering the rest of the manifestations should be be more than enough cause one to quickly “examine ourselves and prove ourselves whether we are really in the faith of Jesus, and can stand before Him in our individual judgment!
To be continued, God willing. Bless all, NMF.