Previous Posts in this Series:
A Gospel Presentation: Part 1 (Two-Age Worldview)
A Gospel Presentation: Part 2 (Creation/Curse)
A Gospel Presentation: Part 3 (Covenant/Commitment)
A Gospel Presentation: Part 4 (Confirmation)
A Gospel Presentation: Part 5 (Charismatic Witness)
"After all of this I will pour out my Spirit on all kinds of people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your elderly will have prophetic dreams; your young men will see visions. Even on male and female servants I will pour out my Spirit in those days. I will produce portents (wonders) both in the sky and on the earth - blood, fire, and columns of smoke. The sunlight will be turned to darkness and the moon to the color of blood, before the day of the Lord comes - that great and terrible day! It will so happen that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered. For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who survive, just as the Lord has promised; the remnant will be those whom the Lord will call." (Joel 2:28-32, NET)
"Then the angel showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Jesus), in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer exist anything that is cursed [because sin and illness and death are gone]; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve and worship Him [with great awe and joy and loving devotion]; they will [be privileged to] see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be night; they have no need for lamplight or sunlight, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign [as kings] forever and ever." (Revelation 22:1-5, AMP)
I chose these two Scriptures to open this last post because they capture the essence of what all of time and history is leading up to: The Day of the Lord, followed by the restoration of the Kingdom of God. As I have mentioned many times during this series, our Great Hope and the essential, fundamental message of the full Gospel, is that God is working out a plan to restore all things (Acts 1:6, 3:21).
Resurrection & Judgement (The Day of the Lord)
Scripture is clear that on or around the Day of the Lord, everyone who has ever lived and then died will be resurrected (both the righteous and the unrighteous) and then all of those people, along with everyone who is living at the time of Jesus' return will stand before Jesus, the King and Judge, to face judgement. Paul addresses this directly in Romans 14:11-12 (quoting Isaiah 45:23) saying, "'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.' So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God." The Apostle John, in the book of Revelation, also talks about the Great Judgement saying,
"Then I saw a great white throne and the One seated on it. Earth and heaven fled from His presence and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne. Then books were opened -- the book of life. So the dead were judged by what was written in the book, according to their deeds. The sea gave up its dead, and Death and Hades gave up their dead, and each one was judged according to their deeds." (Revelation 20:11-13)
So what is happening at this judgement? Jesus himself answers this question in Matthew 25 saying,
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be assembled before him, and he will separate people one from another like a shepherd separates sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." [...] "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels!" [...] "And these will depart into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (Matthew 25:31-34, 41, 46, NET)
This is a bit of a rabbit trail, but bear with me: I was talking with a friend of mine recently and I was recounting a scene in the book "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis. If you're not familiar, it was a children's book series written by Lewis in which he allegorized the story and the various characters of Scripture. In the book, Aslan, who represents Jesus as the 'King of Narnia', is a Lion. Lucy and Susan, the two girls in the story have just recently entered the enchanted land of Narnia and they meet a family of Beavers who are True Believers in Aslan. They are curious about what Aslan is like and when they learn that he is a Lion, they start asking questions:
"Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion." "That you will dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly." "Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy. "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
This captures the juxtaposition between Jesus' goodness and his wrath perfectly and gives us an idea of what it means to fear the Lord (Proverbs 9:10). The King is good and we can trust that, but He is also a Lion, capable of sending us to everlasting punishment (Matthew 10:28). When you realize that one day you, and everyone you know, will stand before His throne and give an account of your life (what you have done, not done, said, not said, thought, etc)...if that isn't a sobering and confronting thought, I don't know what is!
At the culmination of History on the Day that Jesus returns, there will be a judgement and those found with Faith in God's promises, embodied in the life and person of Jesus, will be saved. Those who have turned their backs on Jesus and the Promises of God will be thrown into the Lake of Fire for Eternal punishment. Faith is very much a 'verb' in this context. It is living your life in anticipation of God doing and accomplishing everything He has promised. Three times in the Gospel of John Jesus says something to the effect of "If you love me, you will obey me." (John 14:15, 21, 23) In the verses I have quoted earlier, it is clear that our deeds will be the thing that indicates whether our Faith was genuine or not. I know in the Western Church today there has been some effort to separate Faith and Works, but Scripture is clear that the two are very much tied together. Does that mean that your works or deeds save you? By no means. Jesus, in one of the most solemn verses in the Sermon on the Mount says, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness!" (Matthew 7:21-23) It is not simply 'works' that save someone, but rather the posture of one's heart towards God, which in genuine Faith will naturally lead to obedience and good deeds, even when it costs us something or we don't feel like it. After all, to again quote Jesus from that same Sermon, immediately preceding the passage I just shared, "A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit. [...] Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions." (Matthew 7:17-18, 20)
This is in keeping with the Old Testament as well. Jesus is often reminding the Disciples and the Pharisees that Faith is a matter of the heart, but what he is saying is not a new message. There are many scriptures that could be cited as evidence for this, but I feel that Psalm 51 is the best example. David, in his repentance over his sin with Bathsheba says, "For you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, God, you will not despise." (Psalm 51:16-17)
The Kingdom of God and Salvation
Much has been written on the subject of the 'Kingdom of God' but I'm already long-winded here. About a year ago, I read a great book simply titled, "The Kingdom of God in History" by Benedict Viviano (highly recommend). In the book, he traces the ideas on what the Kingdom of God is, all the way back to its roots in Hebraic and first-century Jewish thought. Put plainly, the Kingdom of God is an actual physical place, centered in Jerusalem, with a very Jewish King Jesus sitting on the throne of David, just as was promised to David, by God, in 2 Samuel 7 (The Davidic Covenant). David himself (or most people think anyway) expounds on what he understood God's promise to be in Psalm 132 saying, "For the Lord has chosen Zion [Jerusalem], he has desired it for his dwelling, saying, 'This is my resting place for ever and ever; here I will sit enthroned, for I have desired it.'" Earlier in this series, I talked about how important it is to recognize the things the God Himself chooses. That's what makes the opening sentences of Genesis 12 so important - it is God choosing Abraham and announcing to him all of the things that He [God] is going to do through Abraham, because it is His will and purpose. The fundamental ideas of what makes up the Kingdom of God are also that way - God has chosen Jerusalem and has told everyone that He is going to put a King on the throne of David who will rule over the world forever and ever.
To underscore it one more time - Scripture, the promises of God and the Kingdom of God are all Israel-centric. Matthew 19:28 highlights this perfectly:
"And Jesus said to them [his twelve Disciples], "Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelves thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (Matthew 19:28, NASB)
Again, I don't point this out to put Israel or the Jewish people on some kind of pedestal. They are humans just like we are humans. The reason I point this out is because this is God's choosing - He has chosen these people to be the 'executors of His estate'. They have a special role to play not only now (be a 'light to the world' and a 'city on a hill', Romans 11:28-29), but also in the Age to Come as they are the ones who will administer the Kingdom of God to the rest of the World. For now, I digress.
Revelation is very clear that Jesus is not only a King, but also a warrior, leading what appears to be a literal army (debatable as to whether than army is made up of humans or whether it is angels, or both) in a literal battle against the forces of evil, culminating in an ultimate victory over evil for all time. What follows this victory is the full restoration of the Kingdom of God and the re-joining of Heaven and Earth. The picture painted in Scripture is that of the verses in Revelation that I shared at the beginning of this post: resurrected glorified bodies of LIFE - that say YES to God and which are free from the Curse and from Sin. It is a complete restoration of the relationship between God and Mankind. It it a picture of abundant provision. It is a picture of perfect Government and leadership from Jesus, sitting on his rightful throne. It is, very literally, the picture of Heaven that we who believe are hoping in and longing for.
Everything is Pointing in the Same Direction
Everything that I have talked about in this series is pointing to The Day of the Lord and the 'Age to Come'. Creation, and specifically the Garden before Adam and Eve rebelled against God, is how it will be in the 'Age to Come', when God restores the Earth from the Curse and when we are given new bodies, free from Sin and the effects of the Curse. The Covenants are God's promises to restore his Creation - they are the unfolding of the plan of how He will do it. Jesus came to reinforce and confirm God's willingness and ability to follow through on the promises and plan to restore All Things, and to model for us how we ought to live in anticipation of the restoration of God's Kingdom. His death and resurrection and gloried post-resurrection body are a 'first-fruits' of what will happen, worldwide, when He returns. The Spirit was sent to confirm and to equip believers unto the Day of the Lord, to help those of us with Faith to continue on in our faith, persevering through suffering and hardship in this life. The Spirit also serves to convict mankind of sin and judgement and to bring mankind to repentance, unto the Day of the Lord (John 16:8). Everything in the Biblical narrative is pointing in the same direction - towards the Day of God's vindication when Jesus returns to bring salvation (Hebrews 9:28), perfect government (Isaiah 2:2-4) and the renewal/restoration of Creation (Romans 8:20-21).
Final Thoughts
The framework I have presented here over these last six posts is intentionally anchored in the ideas that I have presented here in this post. To put it another way, the Gospel is inherently 'eschatological', a three-dollar theological term meaning, "relating to the death, judgement and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind". One thing that I struggled with prior to learning this framework was how to keep what was important at the forefront of my mind. When I realized that all of this, all of life, was headed towards something, towards a culmination, towards a judgement, and towards eternal reward, or eternal punishment, I realized that I had the anchor I was missing. No matter what happens in this life, good bad or otherwise, the end does not change. To those who persevere in Faith, there is a certain reward, laid out in the certain promises of God. To those who abandon Faith, or turn their backs on God altogether, there is certain punishment. This realization has a way of cutting through all of the noise. It puts into perspective all of the things that happen in this World. It gives meaning to suffering and to obedience. It instills within believers an urgency, not only in the way we live our lives, but also to share with others the Faith that we have.
My hope is that this overview will be helpful to others, and will lead to Gospel conversations. I long to discuss these things, with believers and unbelievers alike.
"Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter; Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgement, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil." (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, NIV)
Areas for Further Study:
- In the last paragraph above, I talk about how the Gospel is inherently eschatological. The Gospel is also inherently Israel centric, given that the promises of God and a scriptural understanding of the Kingdom of God are both inherently oriented towards Israel, first and foremost. As a student of this framework, this was one of the things I had the most difficulty understanding. It wasn't because I felt hostility towards Israel and the Jewish people, but rather, apathy. None of this had ever been even broached in any church or theological setting I was a part of. It took awhile to see how thoroughly Jewish all of Scripture is. The characters, the culture, the authors, etc. It took me awhile to understand God's heart for his own people - the people whom He identified himself as as the God of. It took me awhile to unlearn a lot of subtle, almost imperceptible supersessionism (the idea that God has either abandoned Israel altogether, or that he has transferred his promises to the Church). As I have begun to understand how God has arranged things and what His plan is, I have started to understand the continuing importance of Israel and have begun to understand the very important role the Nation of Israel has to play in Gospel story of redemption and restoration.
- Here is an illustration of the framework I have presented here. I believe the original author of this image is the person who runs the Faceless Witness blog (linked in my blogroll). I am aware that this person also wrote a lengthy series of posts addressing the topic of "What is the Gospel", but I confess that I never read it (or haven't read it yet, anyway). I hope you find this diagram as helpful as I have in seeing the continuous story of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation:
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