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When I, use the word eschatology, I mean, rather, the entire sense of God’s future for the world, and the belief that the future has already begun to come forward to meet us in the present.

The transition from the present world to the new one would be a matter not of the destruction of the present space-time universe, but of its radical healing.

Eschatology, means, the study of the last things.
It also refers to the strongly held belief of most first century, Jews, and virtually all early Christians, that history was going somewhere under the guidance of God, and that where it was going was toward God’s new world of justice, healing, and hope.

The so-called rapture is based on a misunderstanding of two verses and Paul, and that when we get that misunderstanding out of the way, we can find a doctrine of Jesus is coming that remains central and vital if the whole Christian faith is not to unravel before our eyes.

The method of the kingdom will match the message of the kingdom. The kingdom will come as the church, energized by the spirit, goes out into the world vulnerable, suffering, praising, praying, misunderstood, misjudged, vindicated, celebrating: always bearing in the body, the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed.

Jesus is in charge, not only in heaven, but also on earth, not only in some ultimate future, but also in the present right now.

First, heaven relates to earth tangentially so that the one who is in heaven can be present simultaneously anywhere and everywhere on earth: the Ascension therefore means that Jesus is available, accessible, without people having to travel to a particular spot on the Earth to find him.
Second, heaven is, as it were, the control room for earth, the place from which instructions are given.

Heaven and earth and biblical cosmology are not two different locations within the same continuum of space or matter. They are two different dimensions of God‘s good creation. And the point about heaven is two fold.

What creation needs is neither abandonment nor evolution, but rather redemption and renewal; and this is both promised, and guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Phillip Ians, chapter 3, it is not we who go to heaven, it is heaven that comes to earth; indeed, it is the church itself, the heavenly Jerusalem, that comes down to earth. This is the ultimate rejection of all types of world views that see the Finley as the separation of the world from God, of the physical from the spiritual, of Earth From Heaven. It is the final answer to the Lords prayer.

The world is beautiful, not just because it hunting reminds us of. It’s creator, but also, because it is pointing forward: it is designed to be filled, flooded, drenched in God.

“We are citizens of heaven,” Paul does not at all mean that when we are done with this life, we will be going off to live in Heaven. What he means is that the savior, the Lord, Jesus, the king --will come from heaven to earth, to change the present situation, and state of his people.

That which we currently are tempted to regard as the permanent state of our cosmos, will be transformed by the Messiah, acting as the agent of the Creator God.

Redemption is the remaking of creation, having dealt with the evil that is defacing and dissociating it. And it is accomplished, by the same God, now known in Jesus Christ, through whom it was made in the first place.

Colossians 1: 15-20 is the real cosmic christology of the new testament.

The Gnostic attitude: the creative world is at best irrelevant, at worst, a dark, evil, Gloomy place, and we immortal souls, who existed originally in a different fear, are looking forward to returning to it, as soon as we are allowed to.

Creation not itself is divine. Creation was designed to reflect God, both to reflect, go back to God, and worship, and reflect God into the rest of creation, and Stewart Shipp.

The early Christians did not think the world was getting better and better. Under. It’s own steam or even under the study influence of God. But neither did they believe that the world was getting worse and worse. The early Christians believe that God was going to do for the whole cosmos. What he did. For Jesus at Easter.

Gnostic myth, often suggest that the way out of our mess is to return to our primal state, before the creation of the world. In this view, creation itself is the fall, producing matter, which is the real evil.

Diagnostics believed, that the material world was an inferior and dark place, evil, and it’s very existence, but that within this world could be found certain people who were meant for something else. These children of Light were like Fallen. Stars, Tinney, pricks of light, currently hidden within a gross material body. Once they had realized who they were, they would be able to enter into a spiritual existence.

Only in the Christian story itself. Do we find any sense that the problems of the world are solved, not by a straightforward upward movement into the light, but by the creator, God going down into the dark rescue human kind in the world from its plight.

The ninth of progress fails, because it does not in fact work; because it would never solve evil retrospectively; and because it underestimates the nature and power of evil itself, and the Bailes to see the vital importance of the Cross, gods know to evil, which then opens the door to his yes, to creation.