The Final Hope
Article / Produced by TOW Project
The final hope of Christians is not to be spared the suffering that all people experience in the fallen world. It is to participate in the abundant life promised when the world is fully redeemed upon Christ’s return. In the new earth there will be plenty for all. No one will lack provision. Justice will reign. Wealth will be experienced by all, without harm to anyone or anything. We will not suffer a lack of provision ourselves. We will not enrich ourselves at others’ expense. All will be as God always intended it to be.
Isaiah prophesies about that time:
I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind…. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat…They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity….I will extend prosperity to her [Jerusalem] like a river, and the wealth of nations like an overflowing stream. (Isaiah 65:17, 21-23; 66:12)
John too foretells the prosperity of the New Jerusalem. God’s provision is so extravagant that the gates of the city will be pearls, the foundations jewels, and the streets gold (Revelation 21:19-21). If the vision sounds a bit fantastical, perhaps it means that God’s generosity is literally unimaginable to us, accustomed as we are to scarcity.
Contributors: Wayne Kirkland
Adopted by the Theology of Work Project Board November 29, 2011.
Image by
Used under license from Veer
.
Used by permission.
Theology of Work Project Online Materials by Theology of Work Project, Inc. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.theologyofwork.org
You are free to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work), and remix (to adapt the work) for non-commercial use only, under the condition that you must attribute the work to the Theology of Work Project, Inc., but not in any way that suggests that it endorses you or your use of the work.
© 2011 by the Theology of Work Project, Inc.
Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, Copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.
