It is here and now that we find ourselves in this, The Story of stories. God has imparted unprecedented prosperity, technical knowledge, and peace to enable this final mission. Most do not discern the reasons these have been given, and are using them instead for self-serving ends. As God has sent the word out, some have accepted, but the majority have rejected. With many the rejection has not been merely passive. The attacks on the messages and messengers have been unrelenting from without and within. These messages have served to shake and sift the human race, especially those openly claiming to be God’s followers. Their hesitancy to accept the messages and become messengers has actually delayed His plan far beyond the final time prophecy, given by Daniel. But there is no other way to bring things to a conclusion. By His opening the books and declaring the verdict and sentence, before the final execution surrounding the return of Messiah, He is calling each individual to avoid the fruit of self-centeredness, especially in its most deceptive of forms, when it is wrapped in a religious garb, in false worship. He is inviting each back to the intimate fellowship with Him of self-giving. Each of these final messages from the heart of infinite love is a call of the everlasting gospel, a call to the everlasting covenant. The choice is between worship of the Creator in all His beauty of humble love, and worship of the creature in all the allure of self-love. Side by side, in families, in churches, in nations, in all areas of life, particularly in the forms of worship, the final maturing of the two principles is developing. This spiritual battle, waged for millennia, is building to its final crescendo. If ever we needed the armor and weapons for this last warfare, it is now. In particular, the delay is making us vulnerable to counterfeit spirits. As always from the beginning in Eden, the deceptiveness of self-seeking is capturing the majority, but this is only serving to highlight by contrast the glory of self-sacrificing love, as the cross is proclaimed in word and life in ever-increasing clarity and power in those who are responding to God’s faith with faith, and to God’s love with love. It is these alone that are valuing the awesome privilege to be His witnesses in the hour of His judgment, by receiving a love of the truth, and by keeping His commandments and His faith. They are hastening the day when the controversy will be over, when it will be seen that He is true, when every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that He who humbled Himself the most is indeed Lord of all. Then all will see that The Story has been His story from the first.
