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The End
We begin at the end, because the end actually starts in the beginning. Confused? Just hang with me for a little while, and hopefully youâll see where we are heading.
If you knew in advance that Frodo survives the journey to Mordor in The Lord of the Rings, but only barely; that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalkerâs dad in Star Wars; and that Bruce Willis is dead the whole time in the Sixth Sense, would it ruin these stories? You might think that it would, but according to a 2011 study published in Psychological Science, people actually enjoy stories more when they know the ending.1 What we call âspoilersâ could actually be called âimproversâ!
Whether that study is right or not, knowing the end of the story of the Bible not only increases our enjoyment of it, but is also crucial for understanding it.
Making All Things New
In one of the last chapters in our Bibles, the apostle John describes the incomprehensible vision that God gave him of the end of history:
These words, God tells us, are trustworthy and true. They are the reality we need to cling to in the midst of a confusing world. Because our lives are filled with summer blockbusters, increasingly amazing technological advances, and so many comfortable things, it can often be easy to forget what is really real. But the hope and reality of every Christian is that God himselfânot the president, Parliament, or the United Nationsâis making all things new. This reality should change the way we see everything in the worldâand the way we read everything in our Bibles. We need to see that the end of the Bible is closely connected to the beginning of the story. But we also need to see that the end of the story changes the way we live right now, because the end has already been brought into the present.
Even if you have not read Genesis recently, you probably know the main idea of the creation story. God made the world and everything in it. He created humans in his own image and put them in the garden of Eden. But Adam and Eve doubted Godâs kindness to them and wanted to be like him, so they ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (the only fruit they werenât allowed to eat). Because of their disobedience, the world and everything in it was broken. And that is basically what we see when we look out the window or turn on the news today. We live in a world where we can still see Godâs hand in both the beauty of creation and the creativity of people, but it is also a world filled with broken people looking for some way to fix everything that has gone wrong.
If we really want to understand the story of the world and the story of the Bible, we need to see that God told us about the solution almost as soon as we broke the world. And he started to provide for that solution as soon as he told us about it. In Genesis 3:15, he told Adam and Eve that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the Serpent. In other words, he would undo the fall and restore his good creation. From the very beginning, God was committed to stepping into history to change it, renew it, and make it better than we could ever imagineâfor our good and his glory. And that, in a nutshell, is what we mean by eschatology.
When many Christians talk about eschatology, they are thinking about a way to understand biblical prophecy and such events as the rapture, the return of Jesus, and the millennium. More often than not, they have charts and timelines to help graph all of these events, and many of them are more than happy to guess where we are on those timelines and how close we might be to the end of the world. The word eschatology literally means âthe study of the last things,â so you can understand why the emphasis is on these sorts of questions.
The return of Christ and the new creation is obviously a big part of what we mean by eschatology. But I have something bigger in mind. When I talk about eschatology, it starts with God keeping his promises, forgiving sin, sending his Spirit, and reigning as King.
So when we talk about the end, we canât just start with the last page of the Bible. We need to see everything that God has done and is doing to get us to that last page. While we need to see that eschatology is heading toward the end, we also need to see that the end shapes the whole story. In fact, that is how I would define eschatologyâthe study of Godâs work in history to bring the story to his intended end. So when we talk eschatology, we have to start in Genesis.
Eschatology in the Old Testament
Just after Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, God promised that Eveâs offspring would crush the head of the Serpent. In other words, he promised that, through the line of Adam and Eve, he would defeat the Serpent and reverse the fall. Adam and Eve were designed to be Godâs representative rulers in the gardenâthat is a big part of what it means to be made in his image. But they failed to rule as God intended. And because of this, both the human race and creation itself no longer reflect Godâs perfect rule over them. We call this the curse.
So a big part of Godâs work in history is reestablishing his perfect reign as King over all things. Throughout the Old Testament, we see God working to do just thatâfirst through his people Israel, as he reigned as their King, and then through King David and his descendantsâso that he might entrust the rule of creation to them again.
But the Old Testament story is a tragic one. Time and again, Godâs people failed to see how he was working to rescue them from their enemies, failed to submit to him as their King, and failed to see how he was going to crush the Serpent (as he promised Adam and Eve) and use them to bless the world (as he promised Abraham).
Already and Not Yet
While the Old Testament gives us hope and hints about Godâs work to establish his rule, save his people, and bring history to its ultimate end, it is only when we arrive in the New Testament that we begin to see his eschatological work clearly.
First of all, we see that Jesus talks about the kingdom both as having arrived and still yet to come. He says things like âIf it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon youâ (Matt. 12:28) and âThe kingdom of God is in the midst of youâ (Luke 17:21b). But he also teaches us, in the Lordâs Prayer, to pray that Godâs kingdom might come (Matt. 6:10). This means there is some aspect of the kingdom that is already present and some aspect that is still not yet fully here. We see this already-and-not-yet reality on display in other places in the New Testament. In fact, almost everything we read in the New Testament has a bit of an already-and-not-yet flavor to it. Have you ever noticed this?
You may have heard a pastor talk about how we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. This is because our redemption is already and not yet. On the one hand, itâs clear that our redemption as Christians has already happened. Paul says that in Christ, âwe have redemption, the forgiveness of sinsâ (Col. 1:14). On the other hand, he also talks about redemption as a future reality. In Romans 8:23b, he says, âWe wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.â In some ...
