God’s ULTIMATE Goal — what is God’s plan for eternity?

[0:00] will be somewhere else now the problem is that that platonic vision of leaving earth and going to heaven which is quite widespread in the first century by the way among platonists not among jews or christians is completely antithetical to what you find in the new testament in the new testament the last scene of the bible revelation 21 is not saved souls going upstairs to heaven it's the new jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth [Music] nt right once again coming through in the clutch i was listening to remnant radio through the day if you don't know this channel you should absolutely follow it i love their stuff i'll include a link it down in the description below back when the whole world was still tripping over itself and stumbling and going crazy over the covid situation nt wright wrote a little book

[0:48] called god and the pandemic and it was during that time that the guys from remnant radio namely joshua lewis and michael roundtree invited him on to talk about the new heavens and the new earth what you're about to hear is super close to what i wrote in my book but i promise i wrote the book before i watched this video so let's just go ahead and let him speak for himself i've got a little clip here from this video that i want to have you guys listen to and it's it's incredible i'll break it down i'll cause pause occasionally and we'll we'll talk about it uh so talking new heavens and new earth you you just started to to touch on this this has uh ramifications for the vocation of the church could you help us maybe by way of contrast if somebody doesn't have a theology of new heavens and new earth how does this affect the way they talk about the coronavirus versus if they do have a

[1:35] theology of new heavens and new earth how they might talk about the coronavirus before we let tom wright answer the question i'd like to just point out how brilliant the question itself is because it's portraying it's helping you to understand that your eschatology really does help to shape the way that you live today the choices that you make today not only with regard to what has been happening with the coronavirus over the past couple of years but truly in every area of life so i get really excited when people ask this question because there is a huge difference if you understand that the eschaton that is to say the final ultimate state not whatever's next in the prophetic end times calendar but what's last the goal for which the whole universe is striving right now if you understand that situation to be a renewed heaven and earth overlapping once again that should change the way

[2:24] that you understand vocation calling what we're supposed to be doing what the church's mission is so let's hear what nt wright has to say about this it's really interesting oh yeah yeah that's a great question and uh probably did desires really an hour-long lecture rather than a two-minute answer but let me try it like this um as a result of the secular culture of the last two or three hundred years many western christians have bought into forms of platonism secularism picking up on ancient epicureanism has imagined that if there is a heavenly okay sorry that's a lot of isms uh i just recognize that that those some of those might be new terms uh for some of you so um secularism obviously is the view that there is nothing beyond the material that there's nothing really sacred that there's no spiritual anything it's just

[3:12] all material really tight closely tied to um the belief that there's nothing supernatural platonism we'll talk about these more in detail later but the platonism is really the one i want you to focus on now platonism in this context essentially means that spirit good physical bad uh and and we're just gonna start with that we'll talk about these in detail another time but have that in mind as he keeps going wrong way away and it doesn't engage with earth at all and therefore the aim of people on earth is to find the way to make sure their soul or whatever goes to heaven so really the only thing to say to people at the moment is well if this reminds you that we're going to die um and then you need to be sure where your soul is going in other words all the coronavirus does is give you a nudge and say think about death and

[4:00] therefore either go and evangelize people who don't believe or uh if you do believe already rejoice um etc this is huge because what he's pointing out is the way that i think a lot of christians have approached the coronavirus situation and what they've talked about so the fact of the matter is that most people's worldview only allows two responses one of them is arguing with the government the second one is to just point out that if you believe that you are going to heaven when you die or going to hell when you die and that's the extent of your thinking regarding spiritual stuff then the fact that death is all around you right now should cause you to rethink where you're headed not wrong but incomplete let's let tom finish his thought there you'll be somewhere else now the problem is that that platonic vision of leaving earth

[4:48] and going to heaven which is quite widespread in the first century by the way among platonists not among jews or christians is completely antithetical to what you find in the new testament in the new testament the last scene of the bible revelation 21 is not saved souls going upstairs to heaven it's the new jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth and there's a reason for this that right from the beginning of the bible we we have misread the bible we have imagined that the bible is about god training people or giving them tests or whatever so that they can graduate from earth and end up in heaven and we all flunk the test and so we all deserve to die so god then says jesus that's all right and that's simply a travesty of what the bible is talking about the bible is constantly coming back to the idea that the god who made heaven and

[5:38] earth wants to join heaven and earth together and so that he can come and live with his creatures particularly with his human creatures but um calling his human creatures as he did from the beginning to be his stewards looking after his world for him and god himself wants to come and be part of that and so that as the old testament says three or four or five times one day the whole earth shall be full of the glory of god as the waters of the sea or words to that effect and so when paul says in ephesians 1 chapter 10 that god's plan from the beginning okay i'm going to interrupt him here because this is really what i wanted to talk about what is god's plan from the beginning what was the whole point not only of his creation but then of sending

[6:28] his son of having jesus die on the cross of jesus being physically resurrected what does all of that mean what is it all heading toward what is the goal for which those things were done and i literally just read this passage in ephesians 1 this morning and it hit me again with new renewed freshness god explicitly tells you what the plan was ephesians 1 explicitly tells you exactly what god had intended from the beginning of time for the end of time and tom wright is about to give us the answer so let's give a listen to sum up in the messiah everything in heaven and everything on earth or you know something totally different to what has been the normal western christian assumption that the aim is to leave earth behind and go off to this place called heaven no the bible's vision is for a holistic heaven and earth new reality now

[7:18] with the death of jesus the powers of chaos and darkness that threaten to destroy god's good creation are defeated through his death in the place of sinners it's it's victory through substitution not in either or there but the result of that is that with the resurrection of jesus this new heaven plus earth reality actually is launched the body the physical body of jesus is the prototype the beginning of the new creation that's why when paul says in ii corinthians if anyone is in the messiah new creation if you're in the messiah already share that new creational reality and at the end of galatians he says there's neither circumcision nor uncircumcision what matters is new creation so that god has lodged his new creation in christ with the resurrection

[8:08] the energy that then drives it forward is the holy spirit the holy spirit isn't just given to give christians a good sense of god's presence until the time they're taken away no doubt it is to give us that gift is to give us a sense of god's presence but the point of the spirit is that new creation is then to happen not only to us but through us through us in the world and actually the last two thousand years the church has done an awful lot of that we in the modern west tend to forget it partly because the post post-enlightenment philosophy of america britain france germany etc has tended to tell us oh your old hat you're yesterday's people we now run the world our way and we're going to bring about utopia through our revolutions through our political schemes through our science and technology and we've seen

[8:56] that fall flat on its face again and again rather the christian vision is to say no with new creation launched in jesus we the followers of jesus are given his spirit to be instruments agents of new creation you could put it like this in terms of justification and then i'll shut up because i told you it's going to be a lecture um god intends to put the whole world right in the end the psalms are full of that isaiah is full of that in the present time god puts people right with himself by grace through faith so that then they can be part of his putting right project for the world we are justified in order to be part of god's justice gloriously flooding creation and that begins right now it's not something we have to wait

[9:46] for because jesus has already been raised from the dead so that's great i agree that is great i'm i got to break it down for you now because there was a lot there so tom wright is talking about really what the purpose of the church is not just the purpose of the church but what god's purpose is in all of created history most of my christian brothers and sisters in the united states and canada and the enlightenment west as he says or the post enlightenment west have this view that god's desire is ultimately to nuke this place because it's evil and airlift all of the believers to heaven to then stand before his throne singing forever and the only real issue with that is the bible the bible doesn't allow you to think that the bible doesn't give you that category that's a category that

[10:33] comes to you from greek philosophers and not the scriptures jesus himself prays for god's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven in the model prayer that he gives to us so that we should pray it and what i've done now is i'm gonna i'm just gonna go ahead and open up that ephesians one passage so that we can look at it together so here i am in ephesians one and i'm gonna start reading in verse nine uh it's mid-sentence so you're gonna have to forgive me uh i promise it makes sense in the context too actually you know what let's just go back to verse seven and we'll read it the whole sentence in him that's jesus we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace meaning measuring up to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us okay in all wisdom and insight making known to us

[11:21] the mystery of his will so as a result of the riches of his grace that he's poured out on us he has made known to us mystery not the way the english word works but the way that the greek word works something that was previously unknown that is now revealed to be the truth the mystery of his will meaning we didn't know what his will was before but he's revealed it to us in his grace in christ according to his purpose which he set forth in christ as a plan for the fullness of time okay again measuring up to the standard of his purpose which he that is god the father set forth in christ which is god the son as a plan okay so many of us go through life right now assuming that there is no plan if not in

[12:10] our beliefs functionally where we think there really isn't a plan we're wondering who the heck is captaining this ship where the heck are they taking us because we see the chaos we see the darkness we see the evil we see the insanity we see the lack of reason we see the inability of people to think we see people being in their feelings and arguing with each other about minor things it's a crazy time but that doesn't mean that there's no plan but the plan in this case is for the fullness of time meaning when you get to the end you will see this plan in place and working and what is that plan to unite all things in him things in heaven and things on earth so in the end god's plan is through jesus to reunite heaven and earth it's not to

[12:59] nuke the earth like the death star and then airlift believers out of here it's to unite everything in him and if that's the goal if that's the thing for which we are all striving what we are all headed toward it needs to make a big change in the way that you understand your life now because as nt wright said when jesus rose from the dead that was the down payment that was the beginning the new creation was inaugurated and launched it's not here in fullness yet that's for the fullness of time but in jesus the putting right of the universe has begun through the putting right of the people of the messiah meaning that you and me and everybody around the world who is in christ is now participating in the putting right of the universe not just through the great commission

[13:47] right but not excluding the great commission we go out and make disciples of all nations teaching them to obey everything that jesus taught but also through every other thing that we do the god the job now that god has given to us is to make a more garden-like world to wherever in our sphere of influence we can make the world look more like what it will look like when he reunites heaven and earth together again of course i talk about this at length in my book so i'm not going to belabor the point here but i want you to know that your eschatology what you understand the end to be for believers the goal that we're all headed toward does influence the way that you live now because if you think that the earth doesn't matter and the deeds done in the

[14:34] body don't matter except in how they affect a spiritual reality outside of the physical universe that's going to change how you go through life we're heading right toward easter it's in only a couple of weeks i love easter i think it should be the mainly celebrated christian holiday and the reason why is that because of the resurrection of jesus all things are going to be united in him things in heaven and things on earth and that is god's plan for the fullness of time so there's really nothing for it we can't mess around with this we can't pretend that this is not our goal god himself tells us very clearly in his own word what the plan is and all that's left for us is to just live accordingly in obedience and wisdom following the will of god in everything in our lives so if you're new to this

[15:22] way of talking about eternity chances are you would really enjoy my playlist of short videos just for new viewers and subscribers i'm going to put it right up here so that you've got a link handy and as always if you're trying to dive deeper into all of this stuff you can visit us at our website at theoverlap.life where you can buy my book join one of our one on one of our challenges get some one-on-one coaching even get me on the phone and we can talk about this in person but right now your next step should be to watch these videos over here that are going to help you get acquainted with this way of thinking about eternity further up and further in