Three Cheers for New Creation!

"Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope."

These words of the apostle Paul to the Thessalonian Christians are really helpful. Christians grieve at the loss of loved ones, as anyone would, but Christian grief is filled with hope, as opposed to being hope-less.

Yesterday, I spent the day at Westminster Chapel in London. Gary Habermas, perhaps the world's leading scholar on the resurrection, was there. And so, too, was Anthony Flew, formerly the UK's most well-known atheistic philosopher, who has since 'gone where the evidence took him' and changed his position to one of accepting the presence of God, though not the God as Christians know him at this time. It was fascinating to hear of the 'ding-dong' going on between Flew and Richard Dawkins at the moment, Dawkins accusing Flew as having gone senile. He certainly wasn't on yesterday's evidence!

The main reason I attended this event was to listen to Tom Wright (in the photo above), the Bishop of Durham, after reading his brilliant new book, Surprised By Hope. And he didn't disappoint. Surprised By Hope is an attempt to get Christians to recover, once more, the Christian hope of 'life after life after death' as opposed to the woolly thinking that has crept into the church over the years (escaping this earth and going home to heaven), let alone wider society ('Death is nothing at all...I have only slipped away into the next room,' and 'I am a thousand winds that blow...I am the gentle autumn rain' etc). As an amateur naturalist the thoughts of Creation being renewed really excites me. Tom writes about some of the images of this future bodily resurrection life found in Scripture. Reflect on these words from his book as Tom thinks about the marriage of heaven and earth:

'We thus arrive at...perhaps the greatest image of new creation, of cosmic renewal, in the whole Bible. This scene, set out in Revelation 21-22...(is the image) of marriage. The new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband.
We notice right away how drastically different this is from all those would-be Christian scenarios in which the end of the world story is the Christian going off to heaven as a soul, naked and unadorned, to meet its maker in fear and trembling. As in Philippians 3, it is not we who go to heaven; it is heaven that comes to earth...It is the final answer to the Lord's Prayer, that God's kingdom would come and his will be done on earth as in heaven. It is what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 1:10, that God's design and promise was to sum up all things in Christ, things both in heaven and on earth. It is the final fulfilment, in richly symbolic imagery, of the promise of Genesis 1, that the creation of male and female would together reflect God's image into the world. And it is the final accomplishment of God's great design, to defeat and abolish death forever - which can only mean the rescue of creation from its present plight of decay.
...What is promised in this passage is what Isaiah foresaw: a new heaven and a new earth, replacing the old heaven and the old earth, which were bound to decay. This doesn't mean that God will wipe the slate clean and start again. If that were so, there would be no celebration, no conquest of death, no preparation now at last complete. As the chapter develops, the Bride, the wife of the Lamb, is described lovingly: she is the new Jerusalem promised by the prophets of the Exile, especially Ezekiel. But, unlike in Ezekiel's vision, where the rebuilt Temple takes eventual centre stage, there is no Temple in this city (21:22). The Temple in Jerusalem was always designed, it seems, as a pointer to, and an advance symbol for, the presence of God himself. When the reality is there, the signpost is no longer necessary. As in Romans and 1 Corinthians, the living God will dwell with and among his people, filling the city with his life and love, and pouring out grace and healing in the river of life that flows from the city out to the nations. There is a sign here of the future project that awaits the redeemed in God's eventual new world. So far from sitting on clouds playing harps, as people often imagine, the redeemed people of God in the new world will be the agents of his love going out in new ways, to accomplish new creative tasks, to celebrate and extend the glory of his love.'

Wow! Can't wait!