The Real Final Frontier

Okay, so I saw the new Star Trek movie yesterday. It delivers, but that’s not what I want to write about today. On Friday, I suggested there is a frontier that is even more final than the vast realm of outer space, and I hinted that it’s a lot closer than the stars. It’s referred to be several names: The New Earth, the New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God, Heaven. While it’s intriguing to contemplate this real final frontier – what it will look like, what we will do there – for the purpose of this post, I want to consider something more immediate. Why is it this frontier beckons us so?

First, let’s go back, way back, back to the beginning. The Bible teaches that our most ancient ancestors were created in the image of God and placed in a perfect environment under the most ideal conditions imaginable. They lived in harmony with nature, each other, and God. They could hear his audible voice. Perhaps they could see Him with their physical eyes. Maybe they even felt His real touch. All this was possible because the first man and woman had not yet sinned. There was nothing between them and God. They were absolutely innocent.

Sometime after creation, the man and woman succumbed to temptation and sinned. This one act put in motion all the horrors mankind has ever known. The harmony between humans and nature was wrecked. The harmony between humans was severely damaged. The harmony between humans and God was severed. However, as our ancestors stepped into a new world of frustration, trouble and pain, there remained within them the memory of what was lost. And just as the propensity and penalty of sin was passed down from generation to generation, so also the memory of the pre-fall perfection was passed. But it isn’t a memory like we have when we remember something we once knew. For us, this memory exists as a restlessness; the notion that something is very wrong with this world.

Now the irony of this is that while everyone senses this dis-ease in the world, most people fail to understand the cause of it, and therefore the solution to it. They try with all their heart, but even their best plans fail.

I am by no means a pessimist. Quite the opposite. But my worldview is shaped by two basic ideas: 1) The world is broken…which means I believe there had to have been a time when the world was not broken and something very specific broke it. 2) God is fixing it…which means I believe there is hope that the world will be right again and something very specific will fix it. So, I believe the world was once on the right track and it will be again. And those specific somethings? The thing that broke the world is sin. Every frustration, pain and suffering we experience is caused by sin. But there is a solution to this Human Dilemma; a Divine Solution. God started the long process of fixing our sin problem right after it occurred. He completed it with the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus. The Divine Solution has been working in the lives of individuals for about two thousand years. And God will institute its full manifestation when the times are complete. That’s the real Final Frontier.