Posted on 03/27/2017 10:04:47 AM PDT by Gamecock
Do I as a living, breathing, conscious person have a concrete hope for my future? What do I have to look forward to? At times, when I discover that my own spirit is sagging and a sense of heaviness intrudes on me, I sometimes wonder why the gloomy cloud is perched above my head.
Biblical eschatology gives us solid reasons for expecting a personal continuity of life. Eternal life for the individual is not an empty human aspiration built on myth, but an assurance promised us by Christ Himself. His own triumph over the grave is the church’s hope for our participation in His life.
We have heard so much ridicule and mocking about pie-in-the-sky theology that I’m afraid we’ve lost our appetite for it. What the Scriptures promise for our future involves a lot more than a perpetual visit to Mother Butler’s. Jesus Christ and Simple Simon have very little in common.
The promise of heaven is indeed glorious—a promise that not only anchors the soul but fires the soul with hope. Life is not an outrageous horror, though we witness outrages daily. The outrage is not the bottom line. The sting of death has been overcome.
The victory of Christ is not established by platitudes or conjured-up positive mental attitudes. Jesus is not the Good Humor Man. His call to joy is rooted in reality: “Be of good cheer for I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Therein resides our future hope—that Christ has overcome the world. He stared directly into the face of death and death blinked.
Coram Deo
Reflect on this truth as you face your problems today: Jesus overcame the world and has given you the power to do likewise.
Passages for Further Study
Revelation 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
Ping
It just entered my mind, in Scripture the sea is often a metaphor for death.
So does this mean there will be no literal sea, or no more death?
(I know there is not more death, but in the context of this snippet of Scripture)
A couple of years ago, I stopped referring to the afterlife as a place, but rather as a condition, as the Apostles taught.
Traditionally most preachers tend to frame it as “heaven vs hell.” I see it as eternal life vs death.
This is a very good article on the subject:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/10/29/singing-lies-in-church-rjs/
Correct! The sea is also a metaphor for chaos, or from a thermodynamic point of view, entropy. It results in decay as well as death, and will be done away with when good is finally separated from evil.
Charlie Garrett’s Jonah sermons cover this really well:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6Xj_bNWUPxdXfd8w_s-s-FW6wq0wWGXM
A lawyer once said regarding law...” In heaven the lamb and the lion will lay down together...in hell law will rule and it will be meticulously obeyed!”
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