Turning the World Upside Down (1 Thessalonians 1)

For the next five week’s we’ll be walking through a little New Testament book called 1 Thessalonians.  It’s pretty small - just five chapters and only about two pages in my Bible, but it was actually written to a really important city.

Thessalonica (now Thessaloniki) is still the second largest city in Greece, but it is some 2,300 years old.  Around the New Testament times, it was the capital of Macedonia - the northern half of Greece.  And it was rich, very rich.  It had an excellent port, comfortably nestled into the northernmost port of a gulf.  It was also centrally located on the major Roman highway running east and west through the empire.  All of this led to lots of importing and exporting.  They worked hard, and they had lots of cash.

Thessalonians were also very religious.  Like most ancient Greeks and Romans, they worshiped a wide variety of gods.

• Of course, there were the traditional gods of Greek mythology, but the most prominent in Thessalonica were Dionysius and Artemis.  

• Dionysius was the god of wine and ecstasy.  His followers were famous for wild drunken party-parades which “freed” everyone from all their social inhibitions.
• Artemis was worshiped both as goddess of wild animals and goddess of fertility.  

• Thessalonians also adopted two Egyptian gods: Isis and Osiris.

• Isis was the goddess of motherhood, fertility, and magic.  Her statues often showed her nursing a son.  Also known as the Queen of Heaven, she offered salvation and eternal life to all in exchange for humility, confession, and repentance.
• Osiris was Isis’s brother and husband, and he was supposed to be the god of the afterlife and underworld.  Osiris was believed to die every year and be raised from the dead by Isis’s tears.

• Cabirus was a god who was murdered by his brothers.  People worshiped him with water baptism, confessing their sins, and being symbolically cleansed by his blood.  His worshipers also did an intense dance celebrating the male sexual organs.
•   Last but not least, the Thessalonians worshiped Caesar - the Roman Emperor.  They printed coins declaring Caesar to be a god.  Their down-town forum had statues of the current and past Caesars on prominent display.  Caesar was said to be the son of God and divine ruler of the world, the bringer of peace for all humanity.

Thessalonians worshiped these gods at temples, at work-related banquets, at social parties, at sporting events, and at private altars in their homes.  Worshiping more than one god was no problem for them.  If you found another god who might be able to help you, then you just added that god to your worship mix.

So that’s Thessalonica, now let’s take a look at Paul, who wrote this letter.  Paul was one of the first Christian missionaries, and he always traveled with a team.  Acts 6-17 tells the story of Paul’s his second missionary journey when he took along Silas and Timothy.  As they began their journey to the northern part of Turkey, it seemed like God prevented them from going northward.  One night, Paul had a dream that a man from Macedonia was calling to them for help.  So they changed plans and went to Macedonia - northern Greece.  

First, they went to Philippi, and things went well at first - with a few converts.  But before long, there were riots in the streets because of these Christian preachers.  All three were arrested, “severely beaten with wooden rods,” and put into prison.  God miraculously busted them out of prison, converting a prison guard along the way, and the missionaries left town.  

When they arrived in Thessalonica, they first went to the Jewish synagog and started preaching.  That synagog had a lot of Gentile observers - kind of like seekers, where were interested in the Jewish religion.  When they heard that Jesus is the Messiah, they believed and joined in with Paul’s group.  The local Jewish leaders got jealous and started a riot.  They dragged some Christians downtown and appealed to the city rulers, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also” (Acts 17:6).  The Jews turned the crowd against them by pointing out that Christians claimed there is only one God and one Lord Jesus.  

This was a dangerous and subversive belief.  What about all the other gods?  What about Dionysius and Cabirus?  If Artemis gets angry, will she stop our women from having children?  If Isis hears that our own people are denying her, will she still give us eternal life?  And what about Caesar?  Will Caesar crush us all because these fools reject him?  The city was in uproar.

Some of the Christians posted bail for Paul and his team, and they skipped town - basically running for their lives.  The same story was repeated in the next town - Berea.  Paul and his team were naturally very worried about the Thessalonian believers.   They knew it was going to be tough going for them.  They knew that others in Thessalonica would not understand and would try to make them give up on Jesus.  Would their faith withstand the struggle?  Would the church of the Thessalonians survive?

Finally, when Paul couldn’t stand the waiting any longer, he sent Timothy back to Thessalonica to bring him a report.  (Maybe it still wasn’t safe for Paul to go.)  In chapter 3 Paul says, “But now Timothy has just returned, bringing us good news about your faith and love ... So we have been greatly encouraged ...  It gives us new life to know that you are standing firm in the Lord” (1 Thes. 3:6-8).  This encouraging news prompted Paul to write a letter of encouragement and advice to the church in Thessalonica.  

Keep all of this history in mind as we move through this letter.  Let’s read chapter 1 now.

 1 This letter is from Paul, Silas, and Timothy.

   We are writing to the church in Thessalonica, to you who belong to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

   May God give you grace and peace.

 2 We always thank God for all of you and pray for you constantly. 3 As we pray to our God and Father about you, we think of your faithful work, your loving deeds, and the enduring hope you have because of our Lord Jesus Christ.

4 We know, dear brothers and sisters, that God loves you and has chosen you to be his own people. 5 For when we brought you the Good News, it was not only with words but also with power, for the Holy Spirit gave you full assurance that what we said was true. And you know of our concern for you from the way we lived when we were with you. 6 So you received the message with joy from the Holy Spirit in spite of the severe suffering it brought you. In this way, you imitated both us and the Lord. 7 As a result, you have become an example to all the believers in Greece—throughout both Macedonia and Achaia.

 8 And now the word of the Lord is ringing out from you to people everywhere, even beyond Macedonia and Achaia, for wherever we go we find people telling us about your faith in God. We don’t need to tell them about it, 9 for they keep talking about the wonderful welcome you gave us and how you turned away from idols to serve the living and true God. 10 And they speak of how you are looking forward to the coming of God’s Son from heaven—Jesus, whom God raised from the dead. He is the one who has rescued us from the terrors of the coming judgment.

So we need to ask a few questions.  First, why was Paul so happy?  And the short answer to that question is in verse 9.  The Thessalonians had “turned away from idols to serve the living and true God.”  They certainly had enough idols to choose from, and remember that their normal custom would be to add on rather than to turn away.  Normally, when they encountered a new and interesting god, they would add that god to the worship mix.  It was outrageous and almost unthinkable to completely turn away from all their old gods in favor of one new God, and yet, that is what Christianity is about.  

The false gods of Thessalonica offered lots of empty promises - forgiveness, cleansing, protection, pleasure, spiritual freedom, and eternal life.  When Paul was preaching, he must have pointed out that these empty promises become full in Jesus.  What the false gods promised but couldn’t deliver, Jesus gives in a way that passes understanding and outside circumstances.  So when Paul here’s back from Timothy, he is delighted to the depths of his heart to hear that the Thessalonians have left all the false gods to worship Jesus as the one true God.  

But then we need to ask another question.  How did Paul know that the Thessalonians had really turned to Jesus and were still living in Jesus’ way?  What was the evidence that they were still following Jesus?  Verse 3 gives us the answer there.  “We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Faith, hope, and love - these are the classic traits of real Christians.  But for Paul these are not passive or hidden.  For Paul, faith is always active and working.  Love is not a mere emotion; it expresses itself in labor.  Hope is not an escapist longing for the future, but something that gives endurance in the right, steadfastness in times of struggle.   For Paul the Christian life is always lived out.  Faith, hope, and love can always be seen by others because they always fuel action.

We need to ask one last question about this text.  How did it all happen?  Paul went and preached, and the Thessalonians responded by changing their whole lives, but how did it happen?  Paul has no doubts about this.  It was God from start to finish.

• The church of the Thessalonians exists in God.  It lives and breathes in God (1:1).
• Paul thanks God for God’s work in the Thessalonians (1:2).
• All of this started with God’s love, and God chose the Thessalonians (1:4).
• When Paul, Timothy, and Silas preached, it wasn’t with mere human words.  God was working behind the scenes and in the hearts of the Thessalonians, confirming the truth of the message (1:5).
• The Thessalonians modeled their lives after Jesus, and the Holy Spirit filled them with joy despite their difficult circumstances (1:6).
• They were so faithful to God’s message that they became part of God’s message as it spread to other places (1:8).
• They recognized their true role as servants and slaves of the living God (1:9).
• They hope in Jesus as he begins their rescue even now (1:10).

The transformation of the Thessalonian Christians has one root cause - God’s amazing love.  God loves them and is working in their lives.  God has filled their hearts with grace and joy and strength to enable their faithful response.  Yes, they must respond.  Yes, they must remain steadfast in the midst of struggle.  Yes, they must do the hard work of faith and love.  But underneath and through it all is God.  God is our only hope.  

The critical factor of the Christian life is opening our hearts to God.  All of the turning and repenting and working falls flat if we don’t maintain an open dependance on God.  It is God who loves us.  It is God who calls us.  It is God who enables us to respond.  It is God who fuels our faith, hope, and love.  Everything we are is in God.  This is the key to life.

OK, so let’s bring this home.  How does this apply to us?  We actually move through the same kind of process that happens here in 1 Thessalonians 1.  

Like the Thessalonians, we also have idols.  They aren’t as obvious because we don’t usually have religious statues or openly religious ceremonies.  But we have all kinds of things that we worship.  The classic trifecta of modern idolatry is power, money, and pleasure.  But this plays out for us in different ways.  

• Through our job, we may worship money and power.  We may be addicted to success.    
• We might be people-pleasers.  We might never say NO to new work.  We might be addicted to being cool or beautiful.  Somehow deep inside we believe we will be worth more if others believe we are worth more.
• We may be pleasure-seekers.  That could play out with food, adventure, entertainment, sex, porn, whatever.
• We might be living our lives for or through our kids.  We might be putting all our hope in their success.  We might be worshiping the college entrance exam: “If the exam goes well, then everything will be OK.”
• We might even worship rightness - which leads us toward continually seeing how others are wrong.

Oh, we have our idols, too.  They are real, and they demand our loyalty like gods.

And, like the Thessalonians, the most common religious response is to add the new god to our household gods.  We accept Jesus.  We welcome him into our lives, but we don’t get rid of our old gods.  We put the cross on the altar right next to the TV and our wallet and our fashion magazines and our inflammatory emails.  Jesus becomes another of our household gods, who demands worship once a week and the occasional nod at morning or at mealtime.  

This is not enough, and deep inside we know it’s not enough.  But we find it hard to do anything differently.  Unlike the Thessalonians, we can’t cut all of our idols out of lives.  We still have to eat.  We still have to work.  We still have to wear clothes and study and find ways to relax.  The Thessalonians could stop going to the temple, but we can’t stop going to E-mart.  

So how do we give our heart’s loyalty only to Jesus in this mixed up crazy world, where idols seem to be hiding all around us?  In Matthew, Jesus says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s?”  Well, what is God’s?  On one hand, we are created in God’s image, so we should give God our very selves.  On the other hand, everything in this world belongs to God, so we should live in this world recognizing everything as a gift from our Creator.  

I think we can find a clue to all of this in Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth: “What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short.  From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who use the things of the world as if not engrossed in them.  For this world in its present form is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:29-31).  We live in the world, but we aren’t swallowed up by the world.  We use things, but we don’t let the things take over.  Through it all, no matter what, we keep Christ first above all.

And what is the result of this kind of living?  What happens in our lives when we relentlessly pursue Christ?  We have an active faith, a laboring love, and a steadfast hope.  We trust Jesus so deeply that it changes the way we live.  We love other so much that we get involved in their lives.  Our hope in Jesus is so strong that we stand strong in the midst of life’s winds and waves.  

Maybe you like the way this sounds.  But maybe you think it’s impossible to live in this world without bowing down to the idols of this world.  Maybe you think that compromise is an unfortunate necessity.  

Or maybe you’re more like me.  Maybe you see this life of faith, hope, and love, and you want it, and you decide that you’re going to get it.  You decide that you’re going to buckle down and work hard and push yourself until you have the life you want, the life God calls you to.

If you think it’s impossible, or if you think it’s possible through your own hard work, you’re wrong.  This life of total surrender to Jesus, this life of faith, hope, and love - all of this - is only possible through the radical work of God in our lives.  Just like the Thessalonians, this can only happen if God does it.  People who are overcoming addictions know how this works.  First, we admit that we can’t do it.  We’ve lost control, and our lives have become unmanageable. Then, we entrust our lives to God who can do what we can’t.  We give our whole lives to this amazing God who can work a radical healing in us.  God makes it happen, and our job is to live in radical dependence and openness to God’s active presence in our lives.

This week, I’ve been thinking about our church.  Many of you are engaging this conversion process with your whole hearts.  Little by little, we are being transformed.  We are turning to God for help with your addictions.  We are asking for miracles in our personal, and God is answering in amazing ways.  We are standing against our culture of more and pleasure and power.  We are developing more hunger for God and more of God’s love in our lives.  It is a slow, up and down process, but it’s working.  God is working among us.  

When people leave here and move on to other places, many of them write back and say how significant this church has been for them.  Like the Thessalonians at the crossroads of the world, your faith in God is becoming known everywhere (1:8).  As you embrace the message, you are also becoming part of the message.

So today, I want to encourage you.  Continue on.  Hold to the faith.  Keep being converted.  Keep your eyes open for ways you might have embraced idols, and keep cleaning house.  Live with an active faith.  Love in physical tangible ways.  Hope in Christ no matter what - at all times.  And through it all remember that you can’t do it, but God can.  All of this depends on God.  Day by day, moment by moment, let’s open our hearts and lives to God, and let God turn the world upside down through us.

Conversion (Tough Theology - Week 6)

When I was a university student, I did a one semester exchange program at European Nazarene College - a beautiful little campus on the Rhine river at the border of Germany and Switzerland. That spring, we had lots of holidays. Germans take almost as many holidays as Koreans. One of the holidays was Ascension Day, to which I said, “Thanks for the day off and everything, but what’s that?”
Ascension Day is the day when Jesus ascended into heaven - exactly 40 days after his resurrection. We had a special Ascension Day worship service, and the guest speaker was none other than Hermann Gschwandtner, the German missionary who is now the South Asia Field Director and was here in May.
I honestly don’t remember anything Hermann said, but I do remember the text: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
That day, that verse, that sermon - they changed me. I felt God clearly calling me to give my life for evangelism. Sitting in that little European chapel, I knew that the highest purpose for the rest of my life was to help people become authentic Christians.
About a year later, I began working on an MDiv degree in a special program focusing on evangelism. The English word “evangelism” comes from the Greek word euangelion or “Good News” or “Gospel.” Evangelism is Gospel-ism. Evangelism is to do the Gospel, to proclaim Good News, to bring Good News, to be the living presence Gospel. I am here standing before you today because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I have given my life to transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ.
So today, in our last week on the Tough Theology series, we pick up a topic that is very dear to my heart: Conversion. What does it mean to become a Christian? When we talk about the gospel and evangelism and all of that, what are we really aiming at, and how do we get there?
Three people have shaped the way I view conversion. Three key thinkers have radically altered the way I think about what it means to become a Christian. Today, I want to walk you through each of these key thinkers, and I hope they will shape your thoughts on conversion as well.

 The first thinker who has changed my thinking is James Engel. He developed something known as the Engel Scale of Evangelism. It looks like this. This chart may look complex, but it has a simple movement. Everyone in the world is somewhere on this chart. As people’s thoughts and actions become more in line with the gospel, they move up the chart. Anything that helps someone move up - even just one step - is a form of evangelism.

Engel’s Scale of Evangelism expressed a whole new way of thinking about how we help other people become Christians. But another thinker took Engel’s scale one step farther - and made it simpler at the same time. Frank Gray created Gray’s Matrix.
One of the problems with Engel’s scale is that it is primarily related to knowledge. But attitude is a huge part of becoming a Christian. If you hate Christians or the church, you are probably not going to become a Christian.
 With Gray’s Matrix, the goal is to help people move up and right. Knowledge is still important. We still need to help people understand the gospel. But it’s just as important for us to help people feel good about the gospel, the church, Jesus, and Christianity. For some people, just believing that Christians aren’t a bunch of jerks is a big step. If evangelism is like farming, working for this kind of basic attitude change is like plowing the ground.
This has some pretty big implications for how we think about evangelism and conversion. Some studies show that adults who became Christians spent an average of three years in the questioning and searching process before becoming Christians. For more than 70% of these adult converts, the most significant factor in their decision to become a Christian was not information - not the Bible, not sermons, not books, not Christian flyers. The most important factor was having a supportive Christian friend. They saw Christ in their friends, and they wanted Christ in their lives also. But it took an average of three years. And three years is the average, that means that for half of the people, it took longer than three years!
It is very unlikely that “presenting the gospel” to a person we meet randomly will help that person really become a Christian. In fact, if they are on the left side of the chart (with negative feelings toward Christianity), this kind of approach is likely to push them further away from Christ. In a similar way, pushing people for an immediate conversion during a worship service may not be the most effective way to help someone put their faith in Christ.
Helping people become Christians takes time. It takes relationship. It takes real friendship. Becoming a Christian is a process. It’s a beautiful and sometimes difficult journey.

 OK, here’s the second thinker who has changed my thinking: Gordon Smith. He wrote a book called Beginning Well: Christian Conversion and Authentic Transformation. He says he wrote this book because: “the practice of evangelism is undermined by an inconsistent and flawed understanding of conversion.” In other words, we aren’t doing a good job helping people become Christians because we don’t understand what the process of becoming a Christian is really like.
I grew up with the idea that conversion happens by saying “The Sinner’s Prayer,” which is basically asking Jesus to forgive you of your sins. Now, Smith says that kind of prayer is part of conversion, but it’s only one part. The point of conversion is total life change. The point is a total reorientation of our lives to Jesus. Because human beings are so complex, completely changing our lives involves a complex network of changes in belief, attitude, and behavior.
Gordon Smith offers seven separate components of a complete conversion to Christ.

• Belief: The Intellectual Component. John says he wrote his story of Jesus “so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him you will have life by the power of his name.” (20:31). A fundamental part of becoming a Christian is believing in Jesus and his power to give us new life.
• Repentance: The Penitential Component. Jesus’ essential message was: “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near” (Matthew 4:17). Repentance has three basic movements: sorrow, confession, and turning. First, we feel genuinely sorry for our sins. We stop making excuses, and we confess to God and to other people that we have done wrong. But that isn’t enough. We also turn from our wrong ways and turn to God. We change our ways.
• Trust: The Emotional Component. Wesley called this “the inward witness of the Spirit.” Joyful trust in God is an essential part of becoming a Christian. Some people call this “falling in love with God.” “Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong” (Ephesians 3:17).
• Commitment: The Volitional Component. Leslie Newbigin explains commitment like this: “There cannot be a separation between conversion and obedience. To be converted in any sense which is true to the Bible is something which involves the whole person. It is a total change of direction which includes the inner reorientation of the heart and mind and the outward reorientation of conduct in all areas of life.” Becoming a Christian means total commitment to Jesus. Jesus said, “you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own” (Luke 14:33).
• Baptism: The Sacramental Component. Gordon Smith says, “The New Testament does not speak of converted people who are not baptized.”5 Jesus said to make disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them. When the people asked Peter how they should respond to the gospel message they heard, he said, “ Each of you must repent ... and be baptized ...” (Acts 2:38). Baptism is part of what it means to be a Christian. It is a fundamental sign of our forgiveness and new life in Christ.
• Holy Spirit: The Charismatic Component. In Romans 8, Paul says, “And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all... The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.” Every authentic Christian has the Spirit. We have no chance of living as Christians without God’s Spirit living in us. But being a Christian means tuning in to the Spirit of God breathing in us.
• Christian Community: The Corporate Component. No one is a Christian alone. Listen to 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 in the Message: “Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. ... Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit ... We need something larger, more comprehensive.” Being an authentic Christian means participating and contributing in the community of Christians. There is no other way.

So when we look at all seven of these components together, we can make a few observations. Belief and repentance are central, but they are also deeply connected to the other five elements. When we focus on belief and repentance as the whole of conversion, the result is lots of half-way Christians. We need all of these components to become authentic followers of Jesus Christ.

 The other great thinker to change my thinking on conversion is Jesus. Jesus talks a lot about converting to his way of viewing the world. Matthew, Mark and Luke say the summary of his message is “The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the Good News.” This is a message of conversion - transfer of allegiance from the kingdoms of this world to the Kingdom of God. Jesus is asking people to entrust their lives to God and God’s love not to stuff and power. This is a radical conversion. But Jesus approaches this process of conversion in some surprising ways.

 1. For Jesus, conversion is primarily relational not rational. Jesus doesn’t deliver a systematic theology for understanding God. Jesus doesn’t explain four spiritual laws to have peace with God. Instead, Jesus speaks primarily in relational terms. He talks about a shepherd and sheep, a Father and children, a King and subjects, a Master and servants, a Groom and a bride. The key issue for Jesus is our relationship to God and God’s children. Are we trusting? Are we trustworthy? Are we living in harmony with God? Are we abandoning ourselves to the mercy of God?
Again and again in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus most important sermon, Jesus chooses relational language. In just three chapters, Jesus describes God as “Father” 15 times. When Jesus is telling people to trust in God rather than their money, he says, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26). For Jesus the key issue of conversion is entering relationship with the Father that changes our whole way of thinking. For Jesus the key issue of conversion is trusting the Father so deeply that this relationship revolutionizes our whole way of being, our whole way of interacting in the world.

 2. For Jesus, sometimes indirect, unclear language is best. Many of us have been taught to be very direct people: “Mean what you say, and say what you mean.” But apparently Jesus’ mother didn’t say that to him. Jesus is sometimes frustratingly indirect and confusing. When people asked Jesus a question, his most common response was ... a question. When people criticized Jesus or complained against Jesus, his most common response was ... a story.
Jesus seemed to prefer interesting mystery over boring clarity. In the gospel of Mark, there is this interesting phenomena called “the Messianic Secret.” When demons shout, “I know who you are,” Jesus says, “Be quiet” (1:24-25). When Jesus starts to gather a crowd, he leaves them and goes to another town (1:35-38). Jesus healed a leper and “sent him on his way with a stern warning: ‘Don’t tell anyone about this’” (1:43-44). Again and again, Jesus almost runs away from the crowds (1:45).
Mark says that Jesus “taught them by telling many stories in the form of parables” (4:2). Later, Jesus explains why he keeps using parables. “Pay close attention to what you hear. The closer you listen, the more understanding will be given - and you will receive even more. To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given” (Mark 4:24-25). Jesus doesn’t actually want people to know that he is the Messiah yet. He wants them to keep wondering and keep searching. Jesus wants to draw them into the search before they make a decision because the search itself will change them.
Jesus wants people to be confused and questioning because then they can become like little children - ready to learn (Mark 10:14-15). And when they are finally ready to relearn everything, then the conversion process has truly begun.

 3. For Jesus, there are no half-way Christians. At the end of Matthew, in the Great Commission, Jesus sends his disciples out to “go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). Jesus’ goal is not for people to believe a few specific things or to say a certain prayer. Jesus wants disciples who obey everything he has taught. Jesus wants people who are totally committed - heart and soul and body - to his way of life.
Jesus said, amazingly radical things like, “If you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple” and “You cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own” (Luke 14:27, 33). Jesus is not really interested in partial commitment. Jesus wants people who are so forgiven that they live with forgiveness. Jesus wants people that so trust the Father’s love that they live with love. Jesus wants people who are so full of the Spirit’s life that they have no fear of death. Jesus wants total life change, and he won’t settle for anything less. He is always pushing, always pulling, always pleading for everything we are.

 So, when we think about all of this stuff about conversion, here is the gospel. God, our Father, the King of the universe, has loved us before the creation of the world. Our Father created us to be his children, but like the rebellious son, we left our Father’s Kingdom and tried life on our own. The only result was a messed up, broken world, full of violence and pain. Most of us have given up hope that this world and this life can ever be better than this.
But the Father sent Jesus to heal us and to heal our world. Jesus gave his death for our death, his life for our life. Beginning in the hills of Israel and continuing throughout all time, Jesus calls out, “The Kingdom of God is at hand - here, now. Repent; change your way of thinking; change your way of life, and believe this Good News. Rebels can come home. Sinners can be forgiven. The hopeless can be reborn. Our world can be healed.”
Believing and living this Good News is a long process of conversion. It involves our minds, our hearts, our bodies, our thinking, our faith, our emotions, our relationships - our everything. Being fully transformed by the Good News of Jesus Christ involves praying, and repenting, and believing, and committing, and being baptized, and participating in the Church, and the radical mysterious action of God that we cannot control. Authentic conversion changes every part of us. Nothing is left out. And that is good news because we all need to be deeply changed.
Wherever you are in the process of conversion today, take one more step. Look at these elements of conversion, and ask yourself where you need to grow today. Get out the prayer cards in your bulletin. Write your name and write which one of these areas you need to grow in. I’ll pray with you. If it’s OK with you, I’ll call you and we can talk about how to take that step.
Jesus asks for everything you are. This is the path of life. Give your life to the Father through Jesus. In exchange, he will give you his life through the Spirit. Your life for God’s life. That is the best exchange you’ll ever get.

Doubt and Faith about Heaven and Hell - Tough Theology Week 6

(First read Matthew 25.)

After today, I hope you have two things: more doubt and more faith.
I hope you have more doubt about that are not true, more doubt about issues on which the Bible is not clear. More doubt about things you SHOULD doubt.
And I hope you have more faith in things you SHOULD have faith in. I hope you have more faith in a few things the Bible is very clear about. But most importantly, I hope you have more faith in God.

Next, let’s start with a few surprising truths.

• There is no required belief about hell to be a Christian.
• God is not going to say, Because you didn’t believe in hell, you’re going to hell.
• God is not going to say, Because you didn’t believe the right things about hell, you’re going to hell.
• God is not going to say, I won’t forgive you if unless you believe in hell.
• God is not going to say, You can’t get into heaven unless you believe in hell.

Let me say it again. Believing in hell is not a requirement to go to heaven or to be a Christian. It’s important that we say that because a lot of people have walked away from Jesus simply because they cannot believe in hell.
Don’t get me wrong. The Bible does talk about hell, and if we are loyal to the Bible, we will have some concept of hell. BUT - and this is the important part - we don’t all have to have the same concept of hell. The Bible gives us a few basic points about heaven and hell, but beyond that Christians are free to disagree about most of the details. We need to be clear about what is clear in the Bible and clearly state that some things are NOT clear in the Bible.

OK, enough prologue. I said there are a few points that are clear in the Bible, and by “a few,” I actually meant seven. So here we go.

1. Resurrection. In John 5, Jesus says: “the time is coming when all the dead in their graves will hear the voice of God’s Son, and they will rise again. Those who have done good will rise to experience eternal life, and those who have continued in evil will rise to experience judgment” (5:28-29). So, all people who have ever lived will experience a resurrection.
And Paul says in 1 Corinthians: “Our earthly bodies are planted [like seeds] in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever... They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies” (15:42, 44).
At the resurrection, we will have all new bodies - actual bodies. They will be something like the bodies we have now but also somehow different.

2. Judgment. Paul - the apostle of grace - gives us a sobering account of Judgment Day: “For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body.” (2 Corinthians 5:10). We all have things we wish we could hide forever, but Hebrews 4 says: “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable” (4:13). God’s judgement will be perfect (without fault), total (taking everything into account), and universal (including all people who have ever lived).
We don’t like the sound of this judgment, but we need it. Our world is classically unjust. Greedy oppressors prosper and live in rich houses and avoid punishment for their crimes. Loving mothers struggle to overcome poverty and disease just to give their children a chance at life. This life in this world is unfair. If there is any justice, there must be a final Judgment Day when everyone everywhere is called to account.

3. Criteria. The Bible gives lots of different criteria for the judgment. In Matthew 25, Jesus gives three different metaphors of the criteria: (a) being ready when Jesus comes back, (b) good use of God’s gifts, and (c) showing compassion to the poor and needy. When someone asked Jesus how to get eternal life, Jesus said, “keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17). In John 3, Jesus famously tells Nicodemus that he must be “born again.” In Luke 20, Jesus says the key factor is whether you are “worthy.” In Matthew 6, Jesus says that if we don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive us. But Paul is famous for saying, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). James counters, “Faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless” (2:17). Then Paul really complicates things in Romans 2 when he talks about people outside Judaism and Christianity:
Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right. And this is the message I proclaim - that the day is coming when God, through Christ Jesus, will judge everyone’s secret life.

When we wrap all this together and try to make sense out it all, what do we get? God is always working at all times through every means possible to save every person in the whole world. In theological terms, this is called prevenient grace. In the end, we will be judged based on our response to God’s gracious action in our lives. When God worked in our lives from the outside (with preaching or the Bible or anything else), how did we respond? When God worked in our lives from the inside (with the voice of our conscience or heart), how did we respond? In the end, the question is: How did we respond to God’s grace, however and whenever we received it?1 As far as I know, that’s as clear as it gets.
Now, you might say, what about Jesus’ saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)? Or what about Peter’s sermon about Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12)?
Here is the most common Christian answer. If anyone is saved, they are saved through Jesus, but they might not necessarily have put faith in Jesus while in their earthly life. Before you freak out, think about this. What about all the good people in the Old Testament? Is Moses in hell? Are babies in hell? What about people who are mentally handicapped? None of those people would be able to put conscious faith in Jesus, but most Christians believe that all of these people will go to heaven. Somehow in the divine mystery, Jesus’ grace still covers them. So then, we are saved or not - based on how we responded to God’s grace which has come to us through Jesus - even if we don’t know or can’t say the word Jesus.
The key point here is that each of us ultimately chooses where we go. God doesn’t send people to heaven or hell. He lets us go to the place we’ve chosen. If we respond to God’s grace and truth (however we find it), then we get more of it - in heaven. If we walk away from God’s grace and truth (however we find it) and choose selfishness, then we God let’s us become completely self-centered - in hell.

4. Heaven. First of all, almost all Christians agree that the word “heaven” is used several different ways in the Bible.

• Sometimes it is another way to refer to God. Mark and Luke say, “Kingdom of God.” Matthew follows the Jewish custom of rarely using the name of God, so he says “Kingdom of Heaven” instead.
• Sometimes “heaven” means that end of the world paradise or utopia - where God restores everything and makes everything right. Heaven is the place where we experience the fullness of God’s love with the people of God. Some scholars think this will happen here on a renewed earth. Others think heaven will be something completely different.
• Sometimes in the Bible, “heaven” and “eternal life” invade this world and this life. Jesus said to pray: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus says eternal life is to know him (John 17:3). At least five times in the book of John, Jesus says that people who believe in him already have the eternal life now.

When people talk about “going to heaven,” they are mostly talking about that second meaning - paradise with God forever. What will that be like? OK, here’s the only Rob Bell quote I’m going to give you today: “I’ve heard pastors [say], ‘[Heaven] will be unlike anything we can comprehend, like a church service that goes on forever,’ causing some people to think, ‘That sounds more like hell.’”
Surprisingly, the Bible us very earthy images of heaven:

• In the last days, ... They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:1, 4). Farming in heaven?
• In Jerusalem, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will spread a wonderful feast for all the people of the world. It will be a delicious banquet with clear, well-aged wine and choice meat (Isaiah 25:6). Wine and steaks in heaven?
• In that day ... The time will come ... when the grain and grapes will grow faster than they can be harvested. Then the terraced vineyards on the hills of Israel will drip with sweet wine (Amos 9:11-14). Grapes so thick the wine pours down the hills?
• In Revelation, Heaven is the New Jerusalem, which is a magnificent city made of jewels. In the center of the city is a river, and on each side is a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations (Revelation 21-22). Heaven is a city, with a tree that makes medicine?

So what does all of this mean about heaven? I’m not sure. It could be that the Biblical writers had a limited vocabulary. Being people of earth, they used earth to describe heaven. Or it could mean that God is going to restore this broken creation and thoroughly soak this world - our world - with God’s life and light, so that everything become completely transformed into something more glorious and beautiful.
Essentially, heaven will be an unbroken experience of God’s presence and the life that God always intended for us. We don’t know exactly what that will be, but we know that it will be better than the best thing we can imagine.

5. Hell. OK. Here is where it gets hard. Before we talk about the disagreements, let’s note the points where almost all Christians agree.

• First, hell is for people who fail the test, people who don’t pass the criteria of a faithful response to God’s grace.
• Second, the point of hell is to put an end to evil. Hell is God’s final NO! to everything that opposes his love.
• Third, hell is separation from God. People who push God away, get their way. If they don’t want God, God finally quits trying and lets them be completely separated.
• Fourth, hell is really, really, really bad - all kinds of bad. The Bible’s descriptions of hell are metaphors: darkness, fire, a pit, a lake, a place of punishment, a place of total destruction, out, down, prison, torture, etc. How can it be full of fire and dark at the same time?3 These are metaphors not literal descriptions, but these images describe an awful reality that is - literally - real.

Most Christians agree on all of these points. But we can see some of our disagreements by looking at hell’s most common metaphor - fire.
(a) Some people say that the point of hell’s fire is destruction. Hell is God’s final destruction and elimination of evil. Lots of places in the Bible talk about fire as a way to destroy evil. For example, John the Baptist said Jesus will “clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire” (Matthew 3:12). Chaff is the waste product that is eliminated.
If the fires of hell destroy, then people who go into hell are burned up like chaff. They are completely destroyed in the fires of hell. They cease to be. They no longer exist. They don’t suffer forever; they are gone forever.
This makes sense logically. God is the source of all being. Everything that exists exists in God. If hell is total and final separation from God, then that would mean separation from existence. I’m not sure it’s right, but it makes sense with human logic.

(b) Others say that the point of hell’s fire is purification. Lots of Biblical images view fire as a purifying force. In Zechariah God says, “I will bring that group through the fire and make them pure.  I will refine them like silver and purify them like gold” (13:9). Malachi says the Messiah “will be like a blazing fire that refines metal, or like a strong soap that bleaches clothes. He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross” (3:2-3).
If the fires of hell purify, then the point is not to destroy the sinner but to destroy the sin. The fire - even in all its brutal pain - has a restorative purpose, to burn away our sin, to refine us so that we can eventually be restored to God’s presence in heaven. Theoretically, people would be in hell only as long as necessary to make them fit for heaven, only long enough to repent and to be purified.
Connected to this view are all those who believe there might be a second chance to repent after death. I don’t know what I think about this view, but lots of Christian leaders throughout history have believed it is at least possible: Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa (the great trinitarian theologian), Eusebius (the great historian), Jerome (who translated the Bible into Latin), Augustine, and even Martin Luther (the great reformer).4 These Christian leaders said that God’s love and the final victory of love demands at least the possibility of release from permanent punishment.

(c) Lastly, some people say the fires of hell are for punishment and the doors are locked forever. In Matthew 25, Jesus said, “Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons... And they will go away into eternal punishment” (25:41, 46).
In this view, people are just getting what they deserve. People asked for life without God and they’re getting it. Life without God is - simply put - torture.
C.S. Lewis has two interesting variations on this view. As he imagines hell, the pain comes from experiencing the unfiltered light of God’s radiant goodness. That’s only painful for those who have chosen their own darkness. Also, C.S. Lewis imagines that the doors of hell are locked from the inside. People could get out if they wanted, but they don’t want out. They are so bent in on themselves that they don’t want anything to do with God - no matter the cost. Again, this is interesting, but I don’t know if it’s true.

So what is hell? Honestly, I really don’t know. Is hell forever? Is the pain forever? Again, I’m not sure. The essential point about hell is that it’s a really bad place for people who reject God’s grace.

6. Mystery. One of the most important points in the Bible concerning heaven and hell is mystery. This mystery takes shape in three different ways for us.

• Surprise. One of the most common themes of the Bible’s teaching about heaven and hell is that we will all be surprised. The timing of the end will be a surprise: “like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). And the results of the judgment will be a surprise. Both the sheep and the goats were surprised (Matthew 25). Many very religious people will be surprised when they don’t pass the test (Matthew 7:21-23). The first will be last, and the last will be first (Matthew 20:16). We will all be surprised.
• MYOB. Because we will all be surprised, mind your own business. Paul said, “So don’t make judgments about anyone ahead of time—before the Lord returns. For he will bring our darkest secrets to light and will reveal our private motives. Then God will give to each one whatever praise is due” (1 Corinthians 4:5).
• Supra-rationality. If God is infinite, it makes sense that God is beyond our capacity to fully understand. The way God chooses to do things may not make sense in our little heads. “‘My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine’” (Isaiah 55:8). If we’re having a hard time understanding how all of this works, that actually makes sense.

7. Justice and Beauty. Finally, at the end of this story and all the debate about heaven and hell, we come to the justice and beauty of God. As Abraham said, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). We may not understand it all now, for now, “We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!” (1 Corinthians 13:12)
At that point, no matter what the outcome of all of these debates about heaven and hell, we will see that God does what is right. At the end, no matter what the judgment is for us personally or for others we know or don’t know, we will all say that God’s judgment is just. There will be perfect justice in the end.
Also, another important point is that the end will be beautiful. One of the unmistakable characteristics of the book of Revelation is its beauty. God will conclude the world with justice and beauty. If the end now, we would say, “Ahhhh, such beauty; such justice; such mercy. Thank you God.”

Here is the gospel. God loves everyone everywhere. Even though we have rejected God a thousand times, he still offers us grace through Jesus. Jesus died and experienced a hellish death so that we don’t have to. God wants to give us his heavenly life now and forever. Living for ourselves will destroy us.
Heaven and Hell are real - very real. Choose life. Choose God. Ask God to forgive you and to free you. Entrust your life to Jesus, the Author of Life. Trust Jesus to guide you in this life and the next.

Eschatology: Rapture or Restoration?

    We humans have a love-hate relationship with eschatology.  Eschatology is the study of the end.  What will happen at the end of the world?  What comes next? 
    On one hand, we seem to be irrevocably drawn to the apocalyptic, end-of-the-world stuff, especially in movies.  apocalypticmovies.com lists 61 apocalyptic movies since the year 2000.  In his article, “It’s the End of the World, and We Love It,” Mark Moring says, “We are divinely wired to wonder what comes next.”1
    Every now and then, this deep hunger for knowing the future leads people to make some outrageous claims.  Just a few months ago, an 89 year old American radio guy named Harold Camping hosted a huge campaign - with public billboards, radio slots, news footage, and mobile bus advertisements - saying Jesus was coming back at exactly 6 p.m. on May 21, 2011.  Obviously, that didn’t happen.
    That kind of error-based fear-building has given many people a distaste for eschatology.  Many of us would rather just put our heads down and live today, one day at a time.  Some folks just want to forget the future.
    But eschatology is still really important.  It’s the closing chapter of our human story.  In fact, nearly all of the New Testament - and really the whole Bible - is forward looking.  From the Biblical perspective, the future is holding our hand and pulling us into its reality.  
    The problem with understanding the future is that it isn’t here yet.  As much as the Bible is forward-leaning, as much as Christianity views us as being pulled into the future, there aren’t many details. 
   
    Christians are deeply committed to the future, though.  We have a few absolute beliefs about the future. 
    The Apostle’s Creed says:  “We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord ... he will come again to judge the living and the dead...  We believe in ... the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” 
    The Nicene Creed says: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ ... He will come again to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.  ...  We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”
    The Church of the Nazarene pretty much follows these creeds in our statement of faith: “We believe ... that our Lord will return, the dead will be raised, and the final judgment will take place.”
    There are four basic eschatological concepts on which all Christians agree.  Each concept shows up in dozens of places in the Bible, but I’ll give you a sample text for each one. 
Jesus’ Second Coming.  Jesus will come again.  We aren’t sure how.  We aren’t sure when. But Jesus IS coming back.  “Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go” (Acts 1:11).
Resurrection.  Death is not the end.  We will be raised again.   Jesus said, “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned” (John 5:28-29).
Judgement.  Everyone everywhere will be judged according to how we have lived and how we have responded to God’s grace.  “People are destined to die once, and after that, to face judgement” (Hebrews 9:27).
Restoration.  The end of this world is not the end.  One day, God will make everything right.  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. ... Look, God’s home is now among his people! ...  He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.  All these things are gone forever” (Revelation 21:1-4). 

    Second coming, resurrection, judgment, and restoration - all Christians everywhere agree on these four points.  We know Jesus will come back.  We know we will be raised.  We know we will face judgment.  We know God will make everything right.  But beyond these four things, we don’t know very much about the future. 
    There are all kinds of discussions and debates.  Some of these debates revolve around a few key words.
People have all kinds of different opinions about heaven and hell.  (We’ll save that for next week.) 
Revelation 20 talks about a thousand year period (the millennium), and scholars ask: Will Jesus come back before the millennium or after the millennium?  Or is the millennium just a metaphor, not an actual 1,000 years? 
In Matthew 24, Jesus talks about a period of tribulation - a time of suffering before he returns.  But there is all kinds of debate about when this tribulation will happen and whether Christians will experience it or be taken to heaven before it happens - or at least before it really gets bad.
    The Church of the Nazarene has resolutely refused to take sides on these debatable issues.  In the early 1900s, when various Christian groups were merging to make the Church of the Nazarene, some groups wanted us to take a clear stance one way or the other, but as a church we said, “No.”  We don’t take stances on debatable issues.  We give people room to have different opinions about lots of things, especially things that aren’t clear in the Bible.  Our statement of belief on this point is simple: “We believe ... that our Lord will return, the dead will be raised, and the final judgment will take place” (Manual 26.8). 

    So given these basics, how does it all play out?  What are the basic ideas of how the end will go?  As I understand it, there are two popular views of eschatology these days.  Roughly speaking, I think we can call these two views rapture and restoration. 
    I grew up with Rapture-Eschatology.  In my church, we watched the Left Behind movie, and we were all duly scared that we too might be left behind.  Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins made millions telling a fictionalized account of this view.  This view mostly builds on the theology of the USA in the 1800’s.  Here’s the basic concept of the Rapture-Eschatology. 
    Long, long, long ago, God made a good world.  But ever since, we humans have been messing it up.  In fact our world just seems to be getting worse and worse.  Sin is spreading and getting worse all over the world.  And, that’s just how it’s going to go.  Our world is going to get more and more messed up until Jesus comes back. 
    In the meantime, Christians have two basic jobs: (1) Hold on.  Don’t give up.  Don’t let this evil world corrupt you.  (2) Try to get more people to trust in Jesus before it’s too late.  
    Then, at some point, God is going to push the eject button for the Christians.  Jesus is going to rapture all the real Christians out of earth before life gets really bad in the tribulation.  If you don’t get the early ticket out through Jesus, you’ve got to endure all hell breaking loose on earth.  Basically, you’ll wish you were dead.  Then, finally, God will end everything in a huge storm of fire - maybe through a global nuclear war.  After that, we get whatever is next - heaven or the millennium, depending on your local variety of rapture-ism. 
    It’s kind of like our world is this piece of paper, and humans are little stick figures moving around and basically messing things up.  Before things get really, really bad, God sucks out all the Christians and lets everyone else mess up the earth even more.  Then, when he’s had enough, God takes the whole piece of paper, crumples it up, throws it in the fire, and starts over when a clean piece of paper.
    Over the past decade or so, lots of scholars and young people have really knocked Rapture-Eschatology, but I think we haven’t been entirely fair.  Lots of texts in the Bible lean in the basic direction of this view point.  For example, listen to 2 Peter 3:
 3 Most importantly, I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own desires. 4 They will say, “What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again? From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created.”
 5 They deliberately forget that God made the heavens by the word of his command, and he brought the earth out from the water and surrounded it with water. 6 Then he used the water to destroy the ancient world with a mighty flood. 7 And by the same word, the present heavens and earth have been stored up for fire. They are being kept for the day of judgment, when ungodly people will be destroyed.
 8 But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. 9 The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. 10 But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment.
 11 Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives you should live, 12 looking forward to the day of God and hurrying it along. On that day, he will set the heavens on fire, and the elements will melt away in the flames. 13 But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God’s righteousness.
    This Rapture-Eschatology has some strong points.  First, this viewpoint grasps that the hope of humanity is beyond us.  We can’t fix our own problems.  We need help from outside.  God’s radical action is our only hope to get us out of this mess we’ve made. 
    Second, for Christians who are oppressed and persecuted and weighed down by life, Rapture-Eschatology can bring a lot of hope and comfort.  The people who abuse and mistreat us will get what they deserve in the end.  One day, this world and all its powers will go up in smoke, and God will take care of the judgment.  We just need to hold on and wait for our home in that new heaven and new earth.

    But Rapture-Eschatology also has some weak points.  First, it misses the Kingdom of God.  Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God some 71 times, and for Jesus this Kingdom of God can start happening right now in this world - with people who learn to live life God’s way.  But for Rapture-Eschatology, this world just gets worse and worse.
     Another big problem with Rapture-Eschatology is that its basic concept is Christians escaping suffering.  Jesus pulls us out before the suffering gets really bad.  But that’s not what most of the Bible teaches, and that’s not Christian experience.  Ask Christians who fought the lions if God pulled them out.  Ask Christians in North Korea how their tribulation is coming.
    Lastly, a one-sided Rapture Eschatology leads to escapism.  Jesus told us to pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  But Rapture-Eschatology has no concept of heaven coming to earth.  Rapture-Eschatology is all about escaping from earth to get to heaven.  If our world is going down in a raging storm of evil, the best we can hope for is to build a Christian fortress and get as many people to trust in Jesus before this place goes in the flames.  This can lead people to focus only on eternal salvation: “Are you going to heaven?  Because that’s all that matters.”  Unfortunately, some Christians going down this path have neglected this world, our environment, and the poor.  To outsiders they seem to be religious nuts who just want to convert more fanatics.

    In response to this overemphasis on Rapture-Eschatology, Restoration-Eschatology has slowly become more popular.  Some of its big advocates are N.T. Wright and Rob Bell, and much of this tradition builds on Eastern Christianity.  Here’s the basic concept for Restoration-Eschatology.
    God created a good world.  We sinned.  We messed up our world, but much of that original goodness still remains.  It may be buried under layers of dirt and pollution, but underneath it all, there is a core of goodness. 
    The whole point of Israel was to reclaim God’s lost humanity and to restore God’s broken creation.  Jesus came as the climax of this movement of restoration.  Jesus was the Second Adam, the first fruits of the New Creation.  When Jesus died and was raised again, God started a new era of restoration and recreation.  “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation”  (2 Corinthians 5:17). 
    The church becomes an outpost of heaven.  We are like citizens of heaven who have set up a heavenly colony in this foreign land called earth.  Together, we live the life of heaven - love, joy, peace, patience, sharing, generosity, hospitality.  In our community together, we demonstrate and embody the life of heaven.
    Then, slowly, our new creation starts to spread.  We begin the process of rehabilitating our broken world.  We plant trees.  We reclaim garbage dumps.  We show love to the broken and forgotten, and together we are all transformed into more of the new creation that God has always longed for us to be.  Slowly, we become more and more heaven-like in our life together and in our influence in the world. 
    All of this continues, until finally, heaven comes to earth.  Jesus comes back and raises all the dead and establishes his new kingdom where the lion lays down with the lamb, and all people live in loving brotherhood. 
    So basically, this view is that our present age is like this two-dimensional picture.  We think this is all there is, but really there’s this whole other world out there.  There’s this 3-D Kingdom of God just waiting to break in, and the Kingdom of God - or eternal life - is designed to flow through our world like light through glass.  So our job is to make space for God’s eternal life to reclaim our world and to shine eternity through our finite world.  We keep cleaning off the mess and poking holes in the darkness until finally, God shines his amazing light through every corner of our world.
   
    This is obviously a beautiful picture, full of Biblical imagery.  Listen for example to Isaiah 11, a prophecy about the Messiah:
1 Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot
   — yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root.
 2 And the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
   the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
 3 He will delight in obeying the Lord.
      He will not judge by appearance nor make a decision based on hearsay.
 4 He will give justice to the poor and make fair decisions for the exploited. ...
 6 In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together;
      the leopard will lie down with the baby goat.
   The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion ...
 9 Nothing will hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for as the waters fill the sea,
      so the earth will be filled with people who know the Lord.
 10 In that day the heir to David’s throne will be a banner of salvation to all the world.
   The nations will rally to him, and the land where he lives will be a glorious place.
    Restoration-Eschatology affirms God’s great love for humanity and for all of creation.  It is thoroughly optimistic and hopeful.  It encourages us to engage our world, to challenge injustice, and to join God’s mission of healing our world.  If you’ve heard me preach, you know I resonate deeply with this view.
    However, this view also has some problems.  It’s hard to tell exactly how Jesus’ second coming factors in.  And if earth is transformed into the new earth, where do all the resurrected people go?  And what happens to people who reject God and God’s ways of love, where do they all go?  The Bible talks an awful lot about judgment and justice at the end of time.  How does that factor in?  Also, some proponents of this view can basically forget all about God and just work like caring atheists with Christian name-tags. 
    Lastly, this view struggles to deal with the fact that evil seems to win out a whole bunch of the time.  Somehow what we do builds toward God’s restoration, but in the end, it seems like God is going to have to do something drastic to make everything right again. 

    So Rapture-Eschatology and Restoration-Eschatology ... Both have support in the Bible.  Both make sense in their own way.  Both have weaknesses when they are taken to extremes.  Maybe they are both true - in a paradoxical, very biblical sort of way. 

    Here is the Gospel - the good news of Jesus Christ.  God made a good world.  We walked away.  We messed our world up.  God began the restoration process with Israel, but God did something completely new in Jesus.  God made a new humanity in Christ.  Now God invites us into that new humanity to join the recreation process in our world. 
     But our help will not be enough.  We can’t do this on our own.  We’re going to lose a lot of battles - maybe more than we win.  But justice is coming.  There will come a day when God will end the battle.  Jesus will come back.  In some places, the Bible says, God will roll up our world like a worn out rug, and in other places it says God will recreate us like an abandoned garden returning to life.  We don’t know exactly how that will work out, but we know that God will make everything right. 

    You know how when you’re reading a really good book and you’re watching a really good movie, you’re sitting on the edge of your seat.  There are all of these strings of the plot.  The tension is thick.  You can’t figure out how it’s all going to end.  How can all of these widely divergent pieces of the story come together in one coherent whole?  You just want the story to work out so that everything makes sense and feels right and good.  What’s going to happen?  How will it all work out?
    And then, it happens.  In the last five minutes of the story, all the pieces start coming together.  There is that epiphany moment, where the story just falls into place.  The tension is resolved.  The crisis is solved.  Suddenly, this story that was full of conflict and fear and worry and danger is now resolved into a peaceful and fulfilling whole.  Ahh, yes, that makes sense.  That is the perfect ending.

    God promises us a perfect ending.  God promises a perfect ending to our world.  Our world is full of conflict and fear and worry.  There are so many pieces of the story that are just out there lost in the darkness, and we can’t imagine how they will all come together.  The Bible gives us a clue to the ending. 
    It all works out.  Through Jesus, it all works out.  Jesus will come again.  The dead will be raised.  There will be a judgment day.  And God will make everything right.  It’s the perfect ending. 
    We can’t fully understand it now because it’s not the end of the story yet.  But the Bible’s message is simple, “Don’t worry.  Trust Jesus.  Live for Jesus now in the middle of the story.  He’s got the perfect ending.”