Forever

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it,

for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

Revelation 21.23

I’ve been looking into what Jesus said about the end of the age. The subject came up because he warned his disciples that in their lifetime, Jerusalem and its temple would be utterly destroyed. No-stone-left-on-top-of-another destroyed.

That provoked a discussion of when exactly it would happen, which nobody knows, and what signs they should watch for to know it was about to happen.

Jesus got on a roll, talking about wars and rumors of wars, kingdoms and peoples against kingdoms and peoples. It would happen in an instant, so suddenly that it wasn’t worth taking keepsakes or even necessities. Just go. Run to the hills if you want to be safe.

But Jesus didn’t stop there. He went on to talk not just about the destruction of Jerusalem in their day, but the end of the age, when the Son of Man should return once and for all. That would have similar signs, but on a worldwide scale. Earthquakes and lightning and famines. False messiahs and persecution of the saints. Birth pangs, Paul called it. Like nothing the world had ever seen, Jesus said.

And he wasn’t the first to talk like this. Old Testament people spoke of it as the voice of the Lord devastating the earth.Amos: The Lord roars from Zion.

Isaiah: He cries aloud against his enemies.

Jeremiah: The Lord utters his voice from his holy habitation against all the earth’s inhabitants.

David: The voice of the Lord thunders… breaks the cedars… divides the flames… shakes the wilderness… strips the forest bare.

What is this? What’s really going on here?

It’s the revealing of the children of God, for which the whole creation has been waiting. It’s the cosmos coming apart at the seams. The sun going dark and the moon ceasing to shine and the stars falling from the heavens, all 200 billion trillion of them.

Jesus called it the shaking of the powers of the heavens, and it’s only going to happen once because, frankly, everything that can be shaken will be gone.

I’m telling you, that kind of talk gives me pause.

Is anything more enduring than the cosmos, the heavens both natural and spiritual? And yet, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as the old saying goes…

I’m really impressed by the kind of authority and power it takes to destroy the universe. It’s very, VERY hopeful, if you ask me. If you long for the greatness of God, such passages are more than thrilling.

But here’s the thing. The Word of the Lord stands forever.

What does that do to all the statutes God established by which this world operates, including the physical universe? We understand that Jesus himself, the Word Made Flesh, holds all things together by the word of his power. As God spoke the creation into being, he will one day stop speaking.

The good news in all that is this. As the natural heavens and earth pass away, so will corruption. Decay, unrighteousness, sin, death. That’s all going to change. There will be no more dying. No more disease. No more tears or pain or sorrow. Everything that’s wrong with our world will be made right.

Sometimes we get it backward. We see that God created the universe and made people, who then ruined its perfection by choosing to disobey. But God considered their choice essential and provided for it. Hence the statutes and laws. These are unchangeable no matter what people get up to. God did not create a flawed universe, only one in process. Designed as a training ground for people to learn to love and reign in righteousness, God’s instructions were to fill the earth and subdue it.

Given its rocky start, God took it upon himself to subdue the creation—“Cursed is the ground because of you, Adam”—until such time as the outworking of their choice had been dealt with. From that moment, the universe has been tied to the dominion of humanity. Environmentalist groups are aware of this. They urge people everywhere to respect the planet, be conservative in resource management, protect the rainforests and the oceans and the ozone and the wildlife. This is suitable to our rule of the planet, but it doesn’t alter the creation’s groaning as it waits for this “season” of constraint to end.

We have no idea how its release from bondage to decay will affect it. If stars are still forming (7/year in the Milky Way alone, and there are roughly 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe), what if new planets will form? What if new celestial bodies beyond stars and galaxies and black holes and comets and moons and asteroids and nebulae and who knows what else will begin to appear? Yes, something—everything—cosmic is going to change.

The creation is expanding because of how it was created, but it is being held in check until the end of this age. Count on it. We will inherit a “new heaven” and a “new earth” but the laws by which they operate will not change. What will change is who governs them, the soon-to-be-revealed children of God.

Nature will be what God intended it to be, and so will people.

One question occurs to me. If everything will eventually be set right, does it make any difference if we abide by God’s statutes now?

Yes, and here’s why.

The statutes aren’t going to change, but how they are executed will be. Limitations and corruption are essential to the training of the saints. Consider bacteria for example. They play an important part in the cycle of life but the system breaks down when they become invasive and cause disease. People have found ways to fight contagion—that’s training in dominion. Saints add to that growing in wisdom as we make sense of suffering and use pain to build character. Or another example, science can modify seeds in all kinds of ways, increasing crops and feeding masses. That’s training in dominion as we find a way to feed billions of people and gazillions of livestock.

Miracles happen—when the impossible happens anyway—as God gives the word. In the kingdom of his Son, miracles still only take a word, but we who know the statutes of God are able to speak on his authority.

Really, the heart and soul of what Jesus taught is how to live in the kingdom.

That way, when the kingdom comes in its fullness, those who have mastered the ways and statutes of God in this world are going to find themselves reigning with Christ exactly as he reigns.

Talk about entering into the joy of our Master...