"...when an old world is redeemed"
by Captain
Marcus Andersson
I love singing the low key version of “When The Saints Go
Marching In”, by Bruce Springsteen. Yeah – OK – I am getting
old.
But in that song, we meet the lyrics
“Some say this world of trouble
is the only one we’ll ever see.
But I’m waiting on that morning
when a new world is revealed.”
I love the imagery of the New World as much as the next guy. I
love to preach and sing about how God will, eventually, put a
final full stop in the story of this world, and His Kingdom
will break in. A new reality so great, that our very language
breaks when we try to describe it. (Don’t believe me? Check
out Revelations chapter 21 and see what you can make of John’s
language there…)
However, I wish we could sing “when an old world is redeemed”.
Finally. When God’s kingdom is come on Earth. When His will
actually will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. The answer
to the prayer Jesus himself taught us how to pray.
This is a theology in stark contrast to the “we shall be
raptured away, the left behind will perish” that have become
too common in late modern western evangelical and charismatic
Christianity. However, a theology of restoration and
redemption is a theology that is supported by both Scripture
and Tradition. Not least Salvation Army tradition.[1]
What does Hope look like?
The ultimate goal of Theology is to breathe Hope into the
Church. The Gospel is Good News. Period. Full stop. Any
distortion of that – any preaching of those good news, that
leads to a knot in the stomach or a foul taste in the mouth to
its hearers – is simply not Christian. And preaching about the
Future, or even “The Last Things” (Eschatology), without a
focus on our Hope in the ultimate Salvation, is simply not the
Gospel truth.
A teaching such as “The world is getting darker and darker,
until eventually when Jesus will rapture us away to heaven”
is, simply, wrong.
Sure – it is dark around us. It would be foolish for anyone to
deny that. Only in the last week’s news, we have heard
terrible examples. (This particular week there was a terrorist
attack in New Zealand, a new large outbreak of the measles in
Europe, several news stories of large scale corruption and
money laundering, vast numbers of young girls exploited
sexually in a human trafficking case, and so on, and so on.)
But as Christians, we have an opportunity and a duty to teach
about another reality, as well; The Creation groans for its
liberation and completion. (Rom 8:22) God will restore His
Creation into a state where all is good. All.
Our hope is not that Jesus will save us from this world, but
that Jesus will return and save this whole world. From
terrorism. From measles. From the effects of greed. From
sexual exploitation.
The Biblical message of Hope is what Isaiah talks about, when
he talks about how the nations “shall beat their swords into
plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks”.[2]
It is how Jesus gives body to His faith in God. The best way
we can understand the reign of God, His Kingdom, is by looking
at Jesus’ life. And Jesus sure didn’t “rapture” anyone, to
some magic place outside their world, in order to heal or
bring deliverance, or forgiveness for their sins to them.
Instead Jesus established the Kingdom in the midst of a
hostile world.
He teaches His disciples to pray “Your Kingdom come”, not “let
us leave this earth and go to you”.[3]
Hope as portrayed in Revelations, chapter 21, is a world of
peace, of health, where no one will want, where evil will no
longer be. Where every tear is wiped from our cheeks. Where we
will live together with our Lord, forever without end. But it
comes down from Heaven, onto the Earth. God will dwell among
us, we will not be raptured away.
The dangers of thinking wrong about the future
Daniel Migliore writes, in his “Faith Seeking Understanding”
[4]
…contemporary
neo-apocalypticism, as I will call it, marginalizes or ignores
the saving activity of Christ and sometimes weds a gruesome
portrayal of final cosmic warfare with terrorist political
action. Dividing the world into the good and the evil,
neo-apocalypticism demonizes all who are considered enemies,
is absolutely convinced of the righteousness of its own cause,
and in some cases calls for holy warfare
As salvationists (or Christians in general, really, but…), any
theological movement or doctrine that moves our focus from the
“saving activity of Christ”, must be deemed unbiblical. We are
supposed to have exactly the saving work of Christ before our
very eyes, the very lens through which we read the whole
Bible. They don’t call us “salvationists” for nothing. We are
not “God’s Army“ – we are The Salvation Army.
We believe that we are invited into this plan of God to save
the whole world. In fact, more than that – we have responded
to that invitation by entering into covenant with God to do
that very thing. A faith that makes us sit and wait, idly,
while the Darkness inevitably grows darker, until Christ
brings us “home” to Heaven, is not ours. We are saved to save!
So the first danger of a doctrine of the Rapture, is
inactivity. Pacifism in the war.
But the second, and even more destructive risk, is the
possibility of getting the enemy wrong.
In the letter to the Ephesians, as a prelude to the
instruction to put on the Armor of God, Paul writes[5]
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against
the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of
this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in
the heavenly realms.
Not against flesh and blood. Not. Never.
You will never meet a person that God doesn’t love, or that
God does not look upon with grace and mercy. God is not the
enemy of anyone you meet. And neither are you. You are
covenanted to fight for, not against, them. The enemies – the
powers of this dark world – are not people, but the spiritual
forces of greed, of lust, of status and so on. Forces that,
indeed, rule our societies and nations.
Getting this wrong will not only result in pacifying us, it
will instead be helping the enemy, in destroying, slaughter
and stealing from people that God loves.
The third danger is the deterministic faith that this results
in. The world is, according to this faith, on a more or less
set time table. Not much can be done about it. Worse – any
attempt to interfere with the events in this time table is an
attack against God.
But this also means that Christians who think that they will
be raptured, are not encouraged in any meaningful way to take
responsibility for the future of God’s creation. In their
mind, this is a disposable world, and God will save them from
it, regardless. Any overconsumption of the world’s resources
will be without consequence for them, they think.
This goes against our own soldierīs covenant, that vows us to
a life of simplicity and in solidarity with the poor and
marginalized.
No – this neo-apocalyptical view of the future must be
abandoned and be put aside, for a hopeful eschatology,
instead. A story about the Future, that does not miss the most
important parts.
A future of “and”
When we tell our story of the future that awaits us, we have
to use the word “and”. A lot.
We know what we hope for, because the Kingdom is both come, as
demonstrated in the life of Christ
and it will come,
as an answer to our prayers. We have tasted it. God has poured
His love into our hearts already
and will restore
our hearts to eternal love. God will save the world
and He calls us to
partake in that endeavour.
Our hope of a world redeemed must acknowledge that there will
come a day, when God puts a final end to injustice, to
unhealth, to death.
But our hope also calls us to be His hands in this world. A
“body of Christ” to usher in His kingdom.
Put like that, the story of the future might even become an
adventure story, that we get to act out. We get to be involved
in the largest story ever – The World for Christ.
[1]
Booth, William. (1890). ”The
Millenium – or The Ultimate Triumph of Salvation Army
Principles”. Downloaded March 18th,
2019, from
http://www.armybarmy.com/JAC/article12-83.html
[4]
Migliore, Daniel (2014 (1991, 2004)).
Faith Seeking
Understanding – an introduction to Christian theology,
Third edition. Cambridge : Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co. p. 352
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