JonLedbetter

In my last article, I laid out my case for why I believe resurrection is the Scriptural Christian hope. When Jesus returns, our dead bodies will be resurrected. They will rise again from the grave. These bodies will still be our bodies, but they will be different. They will have undergone a “transformation” (Phil. 4:20-21). What kind of “transformation”? What will our resurrection bodies be like? Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, answers those questions in extraordinary and fascinating detail.

How important is hope? Maybe you’ve heard of the experiment that took place at Johns Hopkins University in the 1950s.(1) Without going into too much detail, the experiment involved putting rats in a bucket of water and seeing how long they would survive. Some of the rats drowned after a few minutes, but the others survived for days. What made such a dramatic difference? Professor Curt Richter believed his experiment pointed to one key factor: hope!

If you’ve been following along, then you know I believe the Scriptures teach that God is going to redeem His creation at the return of Jesus. Not only do I believe that the unified story of Scripture teaches this, but I also believe many individual passages in Scripture point us toward this idea. Admittedly, many of the passages we will look at in this series can be pretty difficult to interpret. Because of their difficulty, we may interpret them differently and come to different conclusions. But as for Rom. 8:18-25, Paul leaves us no room to argue over interpretations. Creation is eagerly waiting to be redeemed!

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1) Then in six days He brought light from darkness, order from chaos, and life from lifelessness. When He was finished, He saw that it was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). But here’s the question we’re seeking to answer in this article: “Why?” Why did God create? What is creation’s purpose, and how is that purpose connected to our own?

Often, one of the first reasons people are hesitant to consider renewed eschatology is because they believe it to be new. I’ve heard it many times, “If it’s new, it isn’t true.” I don’t have a problem with that reasoning. If someone teaches something that no one in the past 2,000 years of Christian history believed or taught, that ought to set off alarm bells in our minds. But, one of the most interesting things I learned when studying the doctrine of renewed eschatology is that it isn’t new at all.

Over four years ago, I was introduced to a “strange” and “crazy” teaching. I thought, “I’ve never heard of this before, so it must be false.” So, for the next year, I made it my mission to disprove this new (to me) doctrine. Spoiler Alert! After a year of intensive study, I reluctantly came to believe it myself.

If you could sum up the Bible with one word, what word would you choose? Maybe you would choose “love”. Some have referred to the Bible as God’s love letter to humanity. Or maybe you would choose “grace”, “reconciliation”, “God”, or “Jesus”. But if you were to ask me, I would choose “redemption”. We’ll come back to that thought in a minute.

“We’re just going to have to agree to disagree.”