If you are needing some encouragement for where is our world headed? Then tune into this second part series of A Theology of Hope. You can listen to part 1 here.

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C.S. Lewis gives us some good encouragement for right now:

“How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

— C.S. Lewis, “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948)

FIRST THING: God is good. All the time.

Second: He cares deeply for his children.

““Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” – Matthew 6:25-34

Third: We can trust Him with our lives, our futures, and our kids.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:6-7

—> God will work all things out for his glory and our good.

A look at eschatology

I am not going to get into a huge eschatological debate here, but we do need to address something. By and large, the American or western church has become very complacent about the future.

With the dispensational premillenial view point of the end times being so prevalent in American Evangelism (think: left behind and sudden rapture), it has left so many of us feeling very apathetic and lazy about the future. I think we’ve adopted a very fatalistic viewpoint of the end times. The dis-premill position is that things will just keeping getting worse until bam, Christ’s Church is raptured.

While it’s not true for all churches, it does seem that when we look at the past year and a half, the church has become apathetic. We look around and see the world going down hill and kind of give up. We become apathetic. Many are just kind of waiting for Christ to come back.

But the thing is, Jesus might not be coming back for 1,000 more years. Or 300. Or 30 years. We have work to do! No matter what your view of the end times is, even if you do or don’t hold to a premill view (we don’t), we need to make sure we are thinking Biblically about the future.

Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work!!

So what can we do as we look to the future?

1. Study God ourselves – and teaching our children.
2. Take the long view approach. Are we actively involved in our local church. Are we passionate about God’s Kingdom NOW?
3. How will be get the faith to the 3rd and 4th generations? PREPARE NOW!
4. Support Christian Businesses –> Awareness and intentionality with where your money is going. Supporting the Church financially by supporting its Church members with our business.