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Bible Repentance: Path to Love - Robert J. Wieland

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She is “wretched, and miserable, and poor,” while<br />

living in a time when she should enjoy<br />

unprecedented spiritual wealth. If one of us,<br />

accus<strong>to</strong>med <strong>to</strong> <strong>to</strong>day’s benefits of technology, were<br />

suddenly <strong>to</strong> return <strong>to</strong> living like a king or wealthy<br />

lord in the Dark Ages, he would be proper pitied as<br />

“wretched … and poor” indeed. He would have no<br />

proper plumbing, no electricity, no furnace, no car,<br />

no phone, no TV, no medical care. Hardly any<br />

reader of this book would willingly return <strong>to</strong> such a<br />

primitive life, even in a medieva1 palace, with<br />

chamber-pots, spit-baths, and exposure <strong>to</strong> the<br />

Black Plague. Jesus says that Laodicea is<br />

“wretched” because the spiritual wealth of past<br />

ages becomes “miserable” in a time when spiritual<br />

progress is possible beyond any previous age.<br />

While Christ is performing His “final a<strong>to</strong>nement”<br />

in the second apartment of the heavenly sanctuary,<br />

for us <strong>to</strong> continue living as though He were still in<br />

the first apartment—this is poverty indeed. The<br />

setting of the Laodicean message is the Day of<br />

A<strong>to</strong>nement.<br />

Another problem is that the remnant church is<br />

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