Act VI: When All Shall Be Well

The Christian hope isn’t a hope for some ethereal, pie-in-the-sky, supra-spiritual escapism but the recreation of the heavens and the earth, a recreation of God’s prized image-bearers, and the return to our original vocations. In short, the Christian hope is a return to the “Glory of God,” mankind living in unbridled and perfect communion with God, one another, and with creation in a restored universe. A day is coming when Jesus will return, when the dead will be resurrected, and when judgment will be announced. The righteous will receive new bodies and be granted eternal life in this brave new world. The wicked will be condemned and destined for destruction. After the smoke of the Great Judgment has cleared, there we find the restoration, renewal, and recreation of all things. God promised Abraham a tract of land in Canaan, but Abraham’s family will inherit the entire cosmos and rule over it. This act of recreation, this cataclysmic and traumatic moment in our universe’s history, isn’t the end of the story. It’s both the end of one era and the beginning of another.

The End of the Story is really the beginning of a New. The story began with Act One: God’s original creation, His original plans for the cosmos. The story took a tragic turn in Act Two with the entrance of evil into the world and the subsequent marring of God’s good creation. In Act Three God launched His rescue operation, making a covenant with Abraham and choosing his descendants to be the people through whom He would bring healing and restoration to the world. Abraham’s descendants only complicated the problem, and though Abraham’s descendants were faithless to His covenant, God was faithful. In Act Four Messiah Jesus came, doing what God said he would do and what only God could do, and Jesus was what Israel failed to be and did what Israel failed to do. Jesus defeated evil and inaugurated the Kingdom of God. We currently live in Act Five, the time period between Easter and Consummation, when the inaugurated kingdom is advancing but not yet complete. We are looking forward to Act Six, when God will finally complete what He started in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

And once we come to Act Six, then what? Bear in mind that the calling of Abraham and the work of Christ are all about God’s response to the Fall, which was in and of itself a deviation from God’s original plans for His good creation. If God were so moved by what happened at the Fall to put into motion the calling of Abraham, the election of Israel, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and His kingdom spreading through the whole earth for the purpose of reversing what happened at the Fall, then it says something about how much He prizes His creation and His aims for that creation. He isn’t just going to scrap the universe nor His original plans for it. What happened at the Fall may have put a dent, so-to-speak, in His plans for the cosmos, but He’s gone to great lengths to smooth out that dent. What we find in Revelation 21-22, where Heaven descends to Earth and the world is made new, is a reversal of the Fall, and we find ourselves back in Act One. So the question is begged: What do we do then?

God prizes Act One so much that He subjected Himself to a cross to bring it back to life. The serpent who tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden in Act Two is destroyed in the Sixth Act, and evil is eradicated, so the Fall cannot repeat itself. Act Seven is the restoration of all things to their Edenic state. Mankind fell from the glory of God so quickly that he never even left the Garden to subdue the cosmos for God’s glory; following the consummation, God’s desires for creation and His image-bearing creatures will be carried out. In short, mankind will leave the Garden to subdue the wider world for God’s glory. God’s image-bearers will carry God’s authority and rule to the outermost regions of the cosmos. While in the present God’s people must carry their cross in a sin-stained world, in the new heavens and new earth, God’s people will experience complete self-fulfillment as they live out their genuine human identities. It will be the existentialist’s wet dream as we live out our identities, fulfill our God-given roles, and experience the fruition of true joy, happiness, and contentment. No longer will there be fear, anxieties, or stress; no longer will there be crying, nor death, nor pain. We will dwell in peace with God and one another, and we will rule over creation, creating gardens in the tundra and deserts, in the mountains and valleys, in the rainforests and deciduous woodlands. 

It’s not too farfetched to imagine a future world where civilizations are built, where towns and cities are constructed, where farms are tilled and gardens are flowering. One can imagine a brand new colonization of earth and even, dare we say it, of the entire cosmos. Creativity and technology will form an alliance to carry God’s standard into the farthest reaches of His ever-expanding universe. The current physical, societal, communal, and personal world even in its best moments is but a shadow of what is to come. In Christ’s death and resurrection, dawn has broken forth; the sun is still rising, and when it reaches its zenith at Christ’s return, the light will be so brilliant that all which defaces, distorts, and mars God’s good world will not only be chased away but eliminated. The universe will be ours for the taking as we serve God as His emissaries, ambassadors, and agents; in short, serving God as what we are created to be: His beloved, prized, and devoted image-bearers.