The future life, a salient aspect of theology, is often disregarded by religious spokesmen today—those who settle for a one-world faith that unquestionably heightens the irreligious mentality of our time.
Authentic existence, we are told, must be discovered in the here and now, not in some sweet by and by. But in a few clock-ticks the present will be the past, and the past is closed to us; so that always all we have open to us is the future. “The future,” said C. S. Lewis, “is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”
At a dramatic moment in the New Testament report, Jesus, en route to agonizing death, faced the high priest at Jerusalem and said, “Hereafter you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power” (Matt. 26:64). However one interprets that utterance, he cannot deny that “hereafter” was a large subject with Jesus, as it was with all the New Testament writers.
To be sure, the New Testament does not suggest flight from the here and now. Yet while great stress is laid on the ethics of the believer in the human situation, this good earthly life is never dissociated from the life that shall be in the higher sphere. The most electrifying element of the faith lies in the challenge of the beyond.
The New Testament emphasizes that those who become completely engrossed in life in “this present world” may face eternal ruin. The Apostle Paul, speaking about “the enemies of the cross,” warned that “they are going to end up in hell, for their god is their bodily desires.… They think only of things that belong to this world.” He adds quickly: “We, however, are citizens of heaven, and we eagerly wait for our Savior to come from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:19, Good News for Modern Man). Thus the New Testament always brings into relationship “the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter” (Rev. 1:19).
Scripture marks how “things yet to be” motivates men toward goodness. “Think what sort of people you ought to be,” says one writer, “what devout and dedicated lives you should live” (2 Pet. 3:11, NEB). What is the incentive for this deportment? The structuring of a finer human social order? No. (Not that we should think Peter unfavorable toward working for a better world.) The call to great ethical living is to be motivated by an event in the future. A big happening lies ahead. Worlds will burn, but a new day is coming, a new earth, “where righteousness will be at home” (vs. 13, Good News for Modern Man). “With this to look forward to,” says Peter, “do your utmost to be found at peace with him, unblemished and above reproach in his sight” (vs. 14, NEB).
The Scriptures associate the central sacrament with futurity. Undoubtedly Jesus looked forward through ages when he said at the Last Supper, “I will never again drink this wine until the day I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom” (Matt. 26:29, Good News for Modern Man); for Paul saw in these words the prophecy of a great and far-off happening—“Every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord, until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26, NEB).
To go through the Scriptures and eliminate all references to “the things that shall be hereafter” would be to strip them not only of content but of meaning, and to arrive at the gate of the existential nihilism that is found in so much of today’s one world theology.
Henrik Ibsen once wrote in a letter to George Brandes: “I hold that a man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.” From a scriptural viewpoint, men are nearest right who are in league with that future arranged by God. And they are the happiest! “Console one another,” Paul told the Thessalonians, “with these words” (1 Thess. 4:18, NEB). With what words? Such words as these: “The Lord himself will descend from heaven” (vs. 16).
Our vision of the future may affect our present lives more deeply than our experiences in the past. Who foresees himself as God’s friend tomorrow will not wish to be his enemy today. Who plans to live in heaven hereafter will scarcely be content to live in hell here.
The Gospel keeps setting men’s faces toward the future. Caught as we are in our troubled world, hopelessness nags the man who jettisons his dream of better things to come. The Bible has an expression like a repeated bugle cry: “That day—the day of the Lord.” In the word, all life marches, all ages bend, toward that day. If that day never comes, human existence will have been a nightmarish mystery, history a series of meaningless events.
Jesus faced deadly foes before the council at Jerusalem. His time for this world was brief. Ahead loomed his deathbeam in a human junkyard called Calvary. A violent world was closing in on him. But his vision swept swift-winged through down-coming darkness into the beyond. “Hereafter,” he said, “you shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of Power.”
And so they shall! In the hope of that hereafter lies the hope for mankind’s here and now. Paul understood this. “If our hope in Christ is good for this life only, and no more,” he said, “then we deserve more pity than anyone else in all the world” (1 Cor. 15:19, Good News for Modern Man). If this present world is all a Christian has, he has been outrageously swindled! But Paul’s affirmation bridges time: “The truth is that Christ has been raised from the dead, as the guarantee that those who sleep in death will also be raised” (vs. 20). Men live best to whom life is a forever thing!
—LON WOODRUM, evangelist and author, Hastings, Michigan.
THE ASSASSIN OF GOD
The assassin of god
was a heart sewn
on an empty sleeve,
a foot marching double
file on a one-way street.
The assassin of god
was a man-shaped
blankness, sucking
at the world’s edges,
decaying sunsets.
The assassin of god
went to church, rang
clapperless bells,
remembered his mind
in time to leave it.
The assassin of god
was a pillar of fire
in steel days, made
his life a movie,
and smasht the projector.
The assassin of god
cut his wooden tongue,
nailed himself with ice,
walkt into the harbor
of eternal absence.
The assassin of god
ambusht a metaphor,
drew a target of pale blood,
took a torrent of data
and ate darkness raw.
The assassin of god
murdered a shadow
and called it natural,
ran to the window
and leaped into himself.
F. EUGENE WARREN
