The Solution to Pain and Suffering according to Revelation 21:1–4

When Christians get sick, or when things start to go wrong, we can pray to God, asking him to bring healing, deliverance, or relief. God definitely has the power to change our lives for the better in the here and now, but what do you do when it is not God’s will just yet to bring healing or relief? It is a fairly well documented fact that, for all our prayers, Christians still get sick. And it is a fact that Christians, no matter how strong their faith, still get old and eventually die. All of this poses the question, therefore: when and how will the pain and suffering end?

The Bible points to the coming of Christ as marking the point when all pain and suffering will end for God’s people. This is clear, for example, in the vision given to John in Rev 21:1–4. These verses indicate that pain and suffering will not end fully for God’s people until God brings about the renewal of the cosmos.

According to the vision that God showed John regarding the future of the world in Rev 21:1–4, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, because the first earth will have passed away. God has created the world to exist eternally, but the Bible tells us that the world as we currently know it will not exist forever. The world as we know it is a world that has suffered the effects of sin and disease and death, but God’s plan is to bring about the renewal of the world, which will result in the removal of the effects of sin, disease, and death from the world.

The new heaven and the new earth will not be totally new in the sense that God will destroy the original creation in order to replace it with a totally new creation. Just as Jesus’ resurrection body was his old body transformed, so too the new world will be a transformation, not a replacement, of the old world. God’s plan involves refining the current world through fire. The Apostle Peter states that:

“the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of the judging and destruction of ungodly people … the day of the Lord will come like a thief, when the heavens will disappear with a roar, and the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare” (2 Pet 3:7, 10)

The role of fire when the day of the Lord comes helps us to see that the new earth is the old earth refined and purified. When people refine gold, for example, they put the lump of gold which contains impurities into a furnace. The lump of gold melts and becomes liquid, allowing other substances in the lump to be separated from the gold. This allows refined gold, often up to 99.99% pure to be produced. This refined gold is not new gold. It is the old gold that has been purified. In a similar way, the fire of judgment will refine the world, transforming the old world of sin and death into the renewed world of righteousness and life. This idea of refining, plus the basic continuity in the appearance of the risen Jesus compared to the appearance of his pre-resurrection body, suggests that the new earth will basically look like the world that we currently know, but without any impurities or imperfections.

After seeing the new heaven and the new earth, John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, descending from the presence of God in heaven (Rev 21:2). Jerusalem is the capital city of the kingdom of God, the place where God has chosen to establish his throne on earth. The new Jerusalem, therefore, is basically God’s palace. The perfection of the palace of the eternal King will be the centerpiece of the new world. The new Jerusalem will be beautiful, just like a bride on her wedding day.

Revelation 21:3 records the powerful voice of God explaining the significance of the coming of the new Jerusalem to John: “Behold, God’s tent is with humanity, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself with them will be their God” (Rev 21:3).

The new Jerusalem is the ultimate tabernacle, the ultimate temple, the presence of God among humanity. The coming of the new Jerusalem symbolizes the coming of God to be present in the world in a physical way. God’s plan in creating the world was for God himself to enter into our world in a physical way at some point in the future. The ultimate goal of creation, and the key purpose of the existence of the universe, is fellowship between God and humanity. Christianity is not such much about us going to be with God; it is about God coming to be with us. Immanuel: God with us! God created the human race back in the beginning with a view to being physically present with us in a fully intimate way at the time of his choosing at a certain point of time in world history. This is the significance of Jesus’ first and second comings. Having entered physically into the world in the person of Jesus, God is going to return to the world in order to be physically present in our world eternally in the person of Jesus.

The implications of the personal physical presence of God in the world are massive. According to Rev 21:4, when God appears in the person of Jesus at the time of the second coming in order to be physically present in our world eternally, this will mean the end of all forms of suffering. God can comfort us in the here and now. He can give healing and relief from pain in the here and now. But God also has a timetable. And according to God’s timetable, full relief, full healing, full comfort, will only be realized when the new Jerusalem appears.

According to Rev 21:4, on the day that Jesus returns, God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. This implies that before Jesus comes back, there will be occasions when God’s people will suffer and shed tears. This world is a world in which evil and the effects of the fall still exist, and Christians are still impacted by these negative forces. In this world, Christians still get sick, the ageing process still affects us, and like everyone else eventually we die. But continual pain and suffering are not our ultimate destiny. One day God will wipe away our tears. As a result of Christ’s return, “death will be no longer; neither sorrow, nor crying, nor pain will be any longer” (Rev 21:4).

Pain and suffering and death will not exist in the new world, because “the former things” will have passed away (Rev 21:4). Suffering is part of this world as a result of the fall. But through the refining fire of judgment, and the return of Jesus to be King over the world in a fully realized sense, the old will be swallowed up by the new, meaning that suffering and all of the other effects of the fall will finally no longer exist for those who have the privilege and right of living in the new earth.

Whatever our pain or hardship, the return of Jesus, and the resulting transformation of the cosmos, provide the ultimate solution. When Jesus returns, everything will be perfect; and those who have have been victorious over evil through faith are assured that a place in the new earth, and a full experience of the truth of Immanuel, will be their eternal destiny (Rev 21:7).

The Tragedy of Whitney Houston’s Christian Life

On 11 February 2012 Whitney Houston passed away in a Beverly Hills hotel room. I must admit that I was saddened by the news, partly because Whitney came to fame during the period when I was growing up, and so she was someone whose music I knew, but mainly because Whitney was a singer who claimed to be a Christian. Her life turned into a great tragedy. Starting off with many hopes and dreams, it seems that she mixed with the wrong crowd, and she suffered greatly as a result. Whitney started off a Christian, but many are wondering now if she finished one. In the end it is God’s prerogative to determine each person’s eternal destiny, but we can say that Whitney definitely gave in in a significant way to the efforts of the world to reeducate her.

It is a choice that every Christian has to make. Am I going to live out Christian truth? Am I going to live out my faith? Or am I going to join the crowd, and give in to the world? It is a choice that every single Christian has to make every day: to follow the cross or to follow the crowd?

The tragedy of Whitney Houston was that of a young Christian girl growing up and coming under the influence of the world, leading to mental and ultimately physical destruction. She started off proud of the fact that she was a Christian, that she grew up in the church, singing gospel songs. She wanted to sing in order to praise God for his gift of music. She once said, “God gave me a voice to sing with”; and sing she did!

Yet many Christians found it hard to believe that in the early 90s she got involved with Bobby Brown, an R&B singer and part-time rapper, who at the time did not have a good reputation. Brown had started out singing with the R&B boy band New Edition, but he was reportedly voted out of the band because the other members were concerned about his lewd and disorderly antics on stage.

Something of Brown’s attitude to life can be captured in his hit single My Prerogative, which was written by Bobby in 1988, reportedly in response to being booted off from New Edition: “They say I’m crazy. I really don’t care. That’s my prerogative! They say I’m nasty, but I don’t give a damn. Getting girls is how I live!”

About a year after these words were penned, Whitney met Brown at the Soul Train Music Awards. Eventually in 1992 they got married. The result? Over time Whitney slid deeper into drugs. In her interview with Oprah in 2009 Whitney confirmed that she and Bobby used to regularly smoke marijuana laced with cocaine. There were reports of incidents of domestic violence, and Whitney became increasingly erratic in her behavior. All of this took a toll on her voice, and basically destroyed her career as a singer.

Thanks in large part to the influence of her husband, Whitney was drawn away from God and into the dark side. It seems to me that she lost sight of the supremacy of the kingdom of God, and of her need to seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness. She basically allowed herself to be reeducated by the world, and paid a terrible price. This is also something that Whitney’s saw happening. In the interview with Oprah, Whitney talked about a time when her mum came to her house with the police, trying to rescue her daughter. She said to Whitney, “I’m not losing you to the world. I’m not losing you to Satan … I want my daughter back.”

Whether at the end of her life, Whitney genuinely turned back to God, only God ultimately knows. The evidence suggests that Whitney was still doing drugs up until the time of her death; and the official cause of her death has been determined as probably being an overdose of “a narcotic substance [probably cocaine], prescription medications, over-the-counter medications and alcohol.” But even if Whitney was right with the Lord when she died, we definitely have to say that she was mangled by the world, and never fully recovered. Her life was a tragedy, but it also stands as a warning about what can happen to Christians if we allow ourselves to be reeducated by the world.

The simple fact of the matter is that all Christians are living in the world, which means that it is very easy to be tempted by the world, and to forget that the ultimate reality is the kingdom of God. To what extent is what happened to Whitney happening to other Christian people today? Following Whitney’s death, it is legitimate to ask: Am I slowly being lost to Satan? Am I paying more attention to the crowd, to the fashion, music, and way of life of the world, rather than following in the way of the cross? Have I gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd, seeking to fit in with the world, somehow forgetting what it means to live as a Christian?

We can go through some of the marks of compromise with the world: Following your friends to parties where all sorts of ungodliness goes on because you reckon that that’s what’s cool; using language however disguised that uses God’s name in vain, or that is full of “f this, f that” and other expletives just because your friends talk that way; paying more attention to the messages of the world communicated through music and movies and videos than to God and his word; thinking that romantic love is a matter of doing stuff with your boyfriend or girlfriend without ever thinking about the importance of commitment as expressed through marriage; getting romantically involved with whomever, regardless of whether they have the same beliefs as you. How can a Christian ever be one flesh with someone who does not care about the kingdom of God?

I wonder: how many times in her marriage to Bobby did she regret getting involved with him? Imagine if Whitney had met someone for whom the kingdom of God was important. It is possible that her life and the length of her career could have been very different to what we know today. In talking to Oprah about her decision to divorce Bobby, Whitney said: “I wasn’t going to be in an unholy matrimony. I wasn’t going to be living with a man who decided that he wasn’t going to live the same way I did, or thought about marriage and me the same way... being loyal, being dedicated, being true, being faithful … all those things. I wasn’t going to live with someone like that.” Sadly, this realization of incompatibility between her values and those of Bobby came eighteen years too late. It makes me wonder: if only she had seen earlier the incompatibility between the kingdom of God and Bobby’s belief in his own prerogative.

Christians need to remember that the kingdom of God will replace all human empires, and rule the world forever. God’s kingdom is the ultimate reality. We should not despise this truth by the way we live our lives. As Jesus taught us: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt 6:33).

In the words of one of Whitney’s last songs: “As I lay me down, Heaven hear me now. I’m lost without a cause, after giving it my all. Winter storms have come, and darkened my sun. After all that I’ve been through, who can I turn to? I look to you. I look to you. After all my strength is gone, in you I can be strong.” I hope that these words were close to her heart on the day that her earthly life slipped away.

Two Ways to Live in Romans 6

The objection of Paul’s Jewish opponents, that Christianity was lawless or anomian (Rom 6:1, 15), failed to understand that Christianity maintained the two way ethical system of the Old Testament.

The Hebrew Bible (i.e, the Old Testament) clearly teaches that there are two possible ways of living.

Two Ways to Live

One is the way of life; the other is the way of death. The righteous walk on the road of life, whereas the wicked walk on the road of death. This two way theology is particularly prominent in Psalms and Proverbs. Psalm 1 describes the righteous as abstaining from walking in “the way of sinners” (Ps 1:1). It concludes by saying that “Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish” (Ps 1:6). The way of life is pursued by the righteous, who walk in “the paths of justice” and “the way of [Yahweh's] saints” (Prov 2:8), who “walk in the way of the good, and keep to the paths of the righteous” (Prov 2:20). The way of life is “the way of wisdom” (Prov 4:11). Contrasting with the way of life is the way of death, which is the pathway that the wicked follow, to their detriment: “the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble” (Prov 4:19).

Paul’s Jewish opponents, common to the orthodox Jews of the day, understood (following the teaching of the Hebrew Bible) that the way of life was the way of obedience to torah. As Prov 6:23 says: “the commandment (מצוה) is a lamp, and the teaching (תורה) a light; and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life.” The author of Ps 119 also describes the way of life in terms of following torah. Thus, the way is described as being “the way of [Yahweh’s] testimonies” (Ps 119:14), “the way of [Yahweh’s] precepts” (Ps 119:27), “the way of [Yahweh’s] commandments” (Ps 119:32), “the way of [Yahweh’s] statutes” (Ps 119:33), or more simply “the way of faith (אמונה)” (Ps 119:30). The Old Testament way of faith was the way of obedience to Mosaic torah.

But in teaching that people could be righteous before God through faith in Christ rather than the torah faith of Moses, Paul’s Jewish opponents believed that orthodox Christianity had effectively destroyed the “two way” theology taught in the Hebrew Bible. Hence their insinuation that Christianity was a license to sin (Rom 6:1, 15).

But the Christianity of Paul and the early Christians did not abandon the “two way” ethical structure of the Old Testament. In asserting a greater lawgiver who proclaimed a greater law than the law of Moses, the early Christians redefined the “two way” theology of the Old Testament. They still believed that there was only one way of life and one contrary way of death, but the way of life in the new covenant age was no longer considered to be the way of Mosaic torah but the way of Messianic torah. Hence Jesus’ statement—controversial in a Jewish context—that he himself is “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6); and Paul’s teaching (as per Rom 6) that one can either be a slave of God, through obedience to the gospel (Rom 6:17), which results in life (Rom 6:22); or a slave of sin, which leads to death (Rom 6:21). Paul’s gospel retained the “two way” theology of the Old Testament, but redefined “the way” in terms of Jesus Christ.

The Two States of Servitude in Rom 6

Thus, in the crossover from the old to the new, the way of Moses has become the way of Christ.

Grace Is Not a License to Sin: An Exposition of Romans 6:1–14

Christianity is a religion of grace. The concept of grace as God’s undeserved favor to sinners is, generally speaking, strongly promulgated in evangelical Protestant theology today. But is grace a license to sin? A small minority of Christians down the years have come to that conclusion, but the Apostle Paul argues in Rom 6:1–14 that being under grace involves being set free from sin to serve and obey God. Christianity is a religion of grace, but grace actually involves God moving his people to obedience.

In Paul’s day, there were people who objected to Christianity on the basis that it was anomian or law-less. This was a specifically Jewish objection. Christianity proclaimed that being right with God was a matter of belief in (i.e., submission to) Jesus Christ rather than a matter of obedience to the law of Moses. Christianity, therefore, “devalued” the law of Moses in the sense that the law of Moses was viewed as being subordinate to the revelation of God’s will that had come through Jesus and his apostles. In effect, orthodox Christianity viewed the law of Moses as being divine revelation of second-order magnitude. But this “devaluation” of the law of Moses was viewed by orthodox Jews as being heretical. It was viewed by them as constituting a rejection of Moses and as being disobedience to God.

One of the objections of such people against Christianity was that it was anti-torah. They heard Paul speaking of being under grace instead of law, so they assumed that he and Christianity must be law-less. They also knew Paul’s teaching regarding the primary function of the Mosaic covenant in salvation history: that the purpose of Israel receiving the law from God in the first place was so that Israel would sin against it, thereby creating the opportunity for grace to abound. As Paul argues in Rom 5:20: “The law came in, in order that the transgression might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.”

Paul reflects the objection of such people in Rom 6:1. Romans 6:1 is basically a quotation of one of the objections offered against Paul and his view of the purposes of God in giving the law to Israel. The word translated as increase in Rom 6:1 is a deliberate reference to the language that Paul was using to explain God’s purpose in giving Israel the law (see Rom 5:20). Paul’s opponents were basically saying: “Well, Paul, if God gave the law to Israel, so that Israel would sin, in order that grace might increase, then following your logic, the more we sin, the more grace will increase. Let’s continue then to sin, in order that grace might increase! Your teaching here, Paul, is absurd. Your religion promotes sin, and that is obviously wrong!”

But this portrayal of Paul’s teaching was incorrect. It is true to say that Paul understood that God gave the old covenant to Israel primarily as an instrument to bring about the covenant rebellion of Israel as a backdrop for God’s gracious dealings with Israel and the nations through Jesus. It is true that the giving of the law of Moses led in the purposes of God to an increase in sin in order that grace might increase all the more. But this is not to say that God wanted Israel to sin, nor is it to say that God wants such sin to continue as part of the new covenant that Christ has come to establish.

Paul argues against this Jewish misinterpretation of his teaching by appealing to the significance of Christian baptism. Arguing his case from Christian baptism is a weak argument to use in a debate with non-Christian Jews, but the epistle to the Romans was written to Christians. The main problem for Paul was that the traditional orthodox Jewish view of the law was accepted by many (primarily Jewish) Christians. These Christian Judaizers were in turn promulgating their views in Rome. With the return of Jews to Rome after Nero’s accession to the throne had brought an end to Claudius’s edict of expulsion, the Judaizing position was growing in influence in Rome, and causing disunity within the church. Arguing from Christian baptism is a powerful argument in a Christian context.

The basic principle put forward by Paul was that we (Christians) have died to sin. Having died to sin, it is not theoretically possible to continuing living in sin (Rom 6:2). This death to sin was formally sealed and symbolized in Christian baptism. Christian baptism is a baptism “into Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:3). Through baptism, Christians formally become one with Christ, a member of his body, the church. Baptism unites us to Christ. This means that baptism also unites us to Christ’s death. Baptism also unites us to his burial. Christian baptism means that the Christian is dead and buried with regard to sin! But being dead and buried is not the end. Through baptism (whose efficacy continues as long as faith continues), the Christian also shares in Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Christ’s resurrection from the dead is new life. “Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we [Christians] … walk in the newness of life” (Rom 6:4).

Being a Christian is about having new life; and having new life, also means having a new lifestyle. This life and lifestyle necessarily go together. Paul proves the truth of Christians having a new way of life, by pointing out that sharing in Christ’s death means that we Christians will (in the future) also share in Christ’s resurrection in an experiential way (Rom 6:5). This unity in Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection means that our former self (i.e., the person that we were before our formal conversion at the point of baptism) has been crucified together with Christ. This has happened in order that the body of sin (i.e., our sinful nature) might be rendered inoperative, i.e., that it might be destroyed, so that we might “no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom 6:6). Union with Christ means, therefore, being “set free” from slavery to sin (Rom 6:7).

“If we have died with Christ, we believe that we we will also live together with him” (Rom 6:8). Union in his death goes together with union in his life. It is a total package. And just as Christ has been raised from the dead never to die again, “death no longer rules over him” (Rom 6:9). When Christ died, he died because of the power of sin; but he did so “once and for all” (Rom 6:10). The fact that Christ was raised from the dead to live forever means that his death has dealt fully with the problem of sin. Sin, having been dealt with, Christ’s resurrection life is fully lived under the positive purposes of God. With his resurrection, Christ’s suffering ended. In effect, his resurrection means that he is free from the overbearing power of sin. The implication of all of this is that just as death no longer rules over Christ, likewise sin and death should not be allowed to rule over us Christians. Paul spells this out in Rom 6:11: “So also consider yourselves as being dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Our baptismal union with Christ means that, in a way analogous to Christ himself, Christians have been set free from the power of sin to live new lives in the service of God. To say that Christianity is law-less because it does not follow the law of Moses in every detail according to Jewish tradition is to fail to see the purpose behind the coming of the new covenant and the significance of the believer’s union with Christ.

Paul concludes his argument against this anomian objection in Rom 6:12–14. In Rom 6:12–13 he notes the ethical consequence of our baptismal union with Christ, and calls upon his Christian readers to serve God in righteousness: “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, to obey its desires” (Rom 6:12). The bodies that we currently live in are destined to die. This is the consequence of sin in the world , yet Christians have already been set free from the power of sin. We are not, therefore, to allow sin’s former reign to continue to control us. The pronoun its in the phrase its body is textually uncertain with regard to its gender, although the evidence seems to favor its referent being your mortal body. The desires of the mortal body are sinful desires, but these are not to be obeyed. Neither are Christians to “offer your members as tools of unrighteousness to sin” (Rom 6:13). The word translated as members denotes limbs or parts of the body. Christians are not to use their bodies in the service of sin to do what is not right. Rather, says Paul, “offer yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as tools of righteousness to God” (Rom 6:13). Christians have been set free in Christ to serve God rather than sin, and it is to God that we are to offer ourselves in obedient service. God is the King that we serve, not sin. Christians are to serve God, because “sin will not rule over you” (Rom 6:14). The sense of the future tense of the verb translated as will rule seems to be incorporating the time from the present into the future. This is at least the sense that emerges in the light of the present tense used in the second clause of v. 14: “for you are not under the law but under grace.” The law of Moses in the old covenant age was a historical epoch in which sin and death reigned over Israel (see Rom 5:21). In this, the covenant rebellion of Israel served to replicate and intensify the original rebellion of Adam, which brought death into the world in the first place (Rom 5:14). But Christians through their union with Christ now participate in the new covenant. We belong to the historical epoch in which grace and righteousness rule (Rom 5:21), and continuing to serve sin is incompatible with this new reality.

Being under grace does not mean, therefore, that Christians live in a moral free zone. Paul’s Jewish opponents were wrong to suggest this. Christians have been saved to serve God in righteousness. Christianity may appear to be anomian and anti-torah from the traditional Jewish perspective, but obedience and righteousness are still important. Christ came to enable the obedience of faith among all nations. Grace, therefore, is not incompatible with personal righteousness. Indeed, grace guarantees the proper service of God.

The Concept of Resurrection in the Old Testament with Special Reference to Ezekiel 37:1–14

Is there such a thing as life after death? Scientific atheism, which is growing in popularity in the West these days, says no; but those who believe that death is the end of a person’s existence are in the minority, historically speaking. Apart from some of the ancient Greeks, most people have believed in some kind of life after death.

But what about the orthodox Hebrews of the historical period of the Old Testament? What did they believe about life after death? Some people think that the Old Testament does not say much about life after death. There are also scholars who say that the concept of resurrection was only a new development relatively later on in the history of the Old Testament, and that resurrection was an idea that was borrowed from other ancient Near Eastern cultures, quite possibly from the Zoroastrian religion of the Persians.

Now it is true that the teaching about life after death in the Old Testament is not systematically developed, but the number of passages in the Old Testament that give voice to a hope and trust in God for deliverance from death is by no means small. The Old Testament saints believed that upon death the soul of the deceased went down to a place called Sheol which is often translated in our English Bibles as the pit or the grave, or in Chinese as 阴间 (yīnjiān), the dark place.

The orthodox ancient Hebrews believed in Sheol. They believed that there was a place that the soul of the dead person went to after the death of the body. But existence in Sheol should not really be described as life after death. As far as the Old Testament is concerned, although the souls of the dead had a kind of existence in Sheol, this existence after death was not life!

Existence in Sheol was not considered to be life for a number of reasons: because there is no praise of God in Sheol (Ps 6:5); and because it is a dark and dreary place, distant from God (Ps 88:10–12). As such, Sheol was not considered to be an abode fitting for the righteous, but is properly the appointed destination for the wicked and foolish (Ps 9:17; 49:13–15).

But the hope that the Old Testament believers had was that Yahweh was the one who controlled the movement of souls in and out of Sheol. Like an air traffic-controller who determines which plane comes into the airspace around an airport, which planes come in to land and which planes take off, God is viewed in the Old Testament as being the person who determines not only who goes down into Sheol, but also who gets to get out of that dark and dreary abode.

God has the power to preserve a person’s life by keeping them from descending into Sheol; but as we know, death is one of the few certain things in life. This means that God’s usual practice is to allow people (one day) to descend into Sheol. But the firm hope of the Old Testament saints was that although we might die, God is able to raise or redeem people up from Sheol with the purpose that those so redeemed might, as Ps 116:9 says, “walk before Yahweh in the land of the living.”

There are many psalms where the psalmist trusts in God to deliver him from death. In Ps 49:15, the psalmist says full of confidence: “God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol.” In Ps 27:13, the psalmist says: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of Yahweh in the land of the living!” And Ps 37:29 says that “the righteous will be preserved for ever” and “will possess the land and dwell in it for ever.”

In other words, the Old Testament hope for life after death was the hope of life lived out in the presence of God in the Holy Land. The Old Testament saints had the hope of experiencing life in the land of the living, which involved being in God’s presence forever more. The Old Testament saints believed that God had promised that those who walk in his way would, after death, come to live life in the world again such that their relationship with God might continue.

But how could this idea of experiencing life in the land after death be fulfilled, if not by way of resurrection? The Old Testament belief in the restoration of the soul of the righteous dead to life in the land of the living clearly implies resurrection. As it says in Ps 30:3: “O Yahweh, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.” Being saved up out of the grave is basically the language of resurrection.

This concept of life through resurrection is something that is clearly seen in Ezek 37:1–14. Here the prophet Ezekiel is given a vision concerning the restoration of Israel, and the interesting thing about it is that it is pictured in terms of a large-scale resurrection.

At the commencement of the vision, Israel is pictured as many dry bones lying scattered across the ground in a valley (Ezek 37:1–2). Then God asked Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel wasn’t sure, but he knew that God knew (Ezek 37:3). Then God commanded Ezekiel to prophesy. God said that, as the bones heard the word of God, they would be moved by the Spirit and arranged in place, then joined by sinews, and covered with flesh, and then covered with skin (Ezek 37:4–6).

So Ezekiel did as he was commanded. He pronounced God’s word over the dry, lifeless bones; and as he prophesied, “there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone” (Ezek 37:7). The sinews, flesh, and skin linked and wrapped the bones into human form; but strangely the bodies were not alive (Ezek 37:8). God called upon Ezekiel to prophesy again, to summon the Spirit to give life to the bodies (Ezek 37:9). So once again Ezekiel did as he was commanded, and the Spirit obeyed the call. The Spirit gave breath to the bodies, and “they came alive and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army” (Ezek 37:10).

Ezekiel 37:1–14 is a vision of the resurrection power of the word of God. God can make dead bones live! And the purpose of this vision? From Ezek 37:11 it is clear that God gave this vision to Ezekiel in order to encourage the people of Israel who had come to despair of life because they were experiencing God’s judgment upon the covenant rebellion of Israel. They had lost hope, but their situation wasn’t truly hopeless. What about the life-giving power of the word of God, the very same word that created this universe back in the beginning? The life-giving of the word and Spirit of God means that Israel could have hope for the future. Specifically, this vision was also a promise, a promise that God would raise them from their graves and restore them back to life back in their own land:

“Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am Yahweh, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am Yahweh; I have spoken, and I will do it” (Ezek 37:12–14).

All of us are getting on in life … some of us perhaps more than others. We human beings all usually hope that death will be some time in coming, but the truth is that we never know when or how death will come upon us. Whether we like or not, waiting at the end of life for all of us is a dreadful reality … death. Naturally no one likes the thought of having to die. The English philosopher, Francis Bacon, once said, “Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark.”

Stepping out into the dark unknown is scary; but as we face death, as we look into the dark abyss, Christians need not be like those who, as the Apostle Paul said, “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thess 4:13). Christians are not like Theocritus, the Greek poet of the third century B.C. who said: “There is hope for those who are alive, but those who have died are without hope.” Being without hope is not true for the Christian. In the face of death, Christians have the hope of life. And this isn’t just wishful thinking, a kind of denial of reality. This hope is based on the reality of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and on the reality of the life-giving power of the Creator of this universe.

Jesus through his own resurrection has broken the hold of the power of death over God’s creation. Furthermore, the Lord Jesus has said that “the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (John 5:25). It is because of the power of the word of Almighty God that one day the bona fide members of Christ’s church, like Israel, will be restored to life in the land of the living.

The famous preacher Martin Lloyd-Jones once described the early Christians who often faced the prospect of a horrible death in periods of severe persecution, as being able to “face death with a smile.” Obviously they were not necessarily literally smiling when they died, but they did die with hope in their hearts. They died knowing that not only would they go upon death to be in God’s presence spiritually, but more importantly that (at Christ’s return to earth) God would act to raise them from the dead, and to restore them to life in the land of the living, where they would live in God’s presence and experience blessing forever more. That is the only way in which the early Christians could face death with a smile.

But what about us? As you face the awful reality of death, and your own death in particular, do you have hope for life after death in your heart? I hope you do. Christians can have a sure hope like no other people have, a hope that is backed up by the reality of the resurrection of Jesus.

The fact of the matter is that God has promised life to those who follow Jesus Christ, and life he will give to such people. God will definitely act to restore his people to life in the land of the living. He did that for Jesus, and he will do it also for us who believe. Believers may have to wait a while until they experience the fullness of this life, but in God’s good timing one day they will experience resurrection and eternal blessing in the presence of God in a renewed world. The God who brought life out of nothing back in the beginning is the God who brought life out of death in the resurrection of Jesus, and the God who will bring life out of death at the end of time when Jesus returns to judge all people.

Just as Ezekiel’s prophecy gave hope to the downhearted people of Israel, so too the word of God gives hope to people today. The gospel, at the heart of which stands the resurrection of Christ, is a prophetic promise that what God did for Jesus, so too he will do for those who are followers of Jesus. So whatever happens to you in the future, if you are a disciple of the Lord Jesus, you can face all things, even death, with the hope of eternal life in your heart. The resurrection of Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament hope of deliverance from Sheol and eternal life in the land of the living.

The Theme of Flooding in the Old Testament

In considering the theme of flooding in the Old Testament, it is best to view the initial period that the earth was covered by water after God created the world as being the first instance of flooding recorded in the Bible (Gen 1:2). God dealt with the “problem” of the formlessness and emptiness of the intial creation by creating form and filling the domains so delineated. God did this through the power of his word. As part of this, God spoke such that the waters upon the earth might be gathered to one place, in order that dry land might appear (Gen 1:9). In this way, God divided the land from the seas (Gen 1:10). The original flooded state of the world could not continue on if animal and human forms of life were to exist and flourish.

The work of God separating the dry land from the seas at the time of creation established a dichotomy between the dry land and the sea, a dichotomy that is reflected in a number of places in the Old Testament (e.g., Exod 14:16, 22, 29; Neh 9:11; Ps 66:6; 95:5; Jon 1:9, 13; Hag 2:6). Proverbs 8:29 describes this work of separation as involving a divine command, reflecting divine wisdom, by means of which God assigned a limit to the sea, a command that the sea could not ordinarily “transgress.” Just as Gen 1 implies, it is God who controls the boundary between the land and the waters of the rivers and the seas. Thus, the psalmist could say that God “puts the deeps in storehouses” (Ps 33:7).

Yet ever since this first separation, the waters have always threatened to overcome the land; nevertheless the word of God has maintained the boundary between the land and the sea, preventing the flooding of the land by the waters on a worldwide scale, apart from the time of the great flood of Noah (see “The Theme of Flooding in the Bible: Noah’s Flood”). The role of the word of God in this matter is important. If it was the word of God that brought order out of chaos in the beginning, then without the word of God the world would revert to its default state with the waters overcoming the land. This is what happened at the time of Noah: “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened” (Gen 7:11). Through that event, God showed the human race the consequences of disobedience. Human disobedience results in a reversion to the default state, which is chaos.

The theme of flooding also occurs in the account of the exodus. The water of the Reed Sea stood as a symbol of the impending death of Israel at the hands of the pursuing army. But God “divided the sea, and let [Israel] pass through it … he made the waters stand like a heap” (Ps 78:13). Or as the Song of Moses puts it: “At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up; the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea” (Exod 15:8). Conversely, the destruction of the Egyptian army was as a result of flooding. As the Song of Moses celebrated: “The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone” (Exod 15:5). See also Ps 106:9–11.

The relationship between water, chaos, and death on the one side, and dry land, salvation, and life on the other, as developed in Gen 1, the Noah narrative, and the incident of the Reed Sea, provides the conceptual framework for the biblical metaphor of being overcome by water as an image of death, and also for the related metaphor of being rescued through or from water as an image of salvation from death.

In Psalm 18, for example, David pictures the threat of death from the opposition of enemies as being like a torrential flood dragging him down to Sheol (Ps 18:4–5). But in response to the psalmist’s cry for salvation, God acted to “lay bare” “the channels of the sea” through his word of rebuke (Ps 18:15). “He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters … He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me” (Ps 18:16, 19).

Psalm 69 is another example:

Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me … Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me (Ps 69:1–2, 14–15).

Flood imagery also appears in Ps 88:

You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves … Your wrath has swept over me; your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long; they close in on me together (Ps 88:6–7, 16–17).

Similarly Ps 124:

If it had not been Yahweh who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters (Ps 124:2–5).

Flood imagery also occurs in Ps 32:6; 42:7; and Jonah describes his experience in the stormy sea in terms of flooding (Jon 2:3, 5–6).

Finally, it should be noted that the power of floodwaters is also used as an image of the power of God. The floodwaters surge and roar, but “mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, Yahweh on high is mighty!” (Ps 93:3–4). “Yahweh sits enthroned over the flood; Yahweh sits enthroned as king forever!” (Ps 29:10).

The Theology of Genesis 1

Genesis 1 has been the primary biblical battleground in the contentious debate over views of creation and evolution among Christians for many decades now, but in all of this the important theology of Gen 1 has frequently been overlooked.

Genesis 1:1 talks about the initial creation of the cosmos by God, but it is interesting from the perspective of the original Hebrew that Gen 1:2 contains three disjunctive clauses. These disjunctive clauses add information that is circumstantial to the main action of the narrative, which skips from v. 1, over v. 2, to resume in v. 3. At the same time, however, there is an element of contrast implied in these clauses. The following translation seeks to bring out something of the sense of the disjunctive nature of these clauses:

(1) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, (2) but the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, but the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the water.

If the disjunctive nature of the first clause in Gen 1:2 is taken as conveying an element of contrast, then this is significant. It prompts us to ask the question: Why would God, when he created the world, initially create Planet Earth to be formless and empty? Surely God with his infinite power could have created a world that was fully formed right from the very beginning, but he chose not to; and the disjunctive clause at the beginning of Gen 1:2 is there to help us see how surprising this is. Why would a God of order create a world that existed in a state of disorder for a certain period of time? What is God trying to teach us?

A similar thing applies to the second clause in Gen 1:2. Like with the first clause in v. 2, the disjunctive nature of the second clause contrasts with the expectation of perfection that one might ordinarily have in relation to God’s creation of the cosmos in v. 1. God created the cosmos, but Planet Earth was covered in darkness. The disjunctive nature of the second clause in Gen 1:2 prompts us to see how surprising this is. Why would a God of light, the God in whom there is no darkness, create the earth only to cover it in darkness?

Formless, empty, covered in darkness; but the chaotic mass was pregnant with the expectation of new life, because the Spirit of God was brooding over the water. The disjunctive nature of the third clause in Gen 1:2 arguably signals contrast with the preceding two clauses just as much as it presents information that is circumstantial to the main action of the narrative. Things might look bleak, but the Spirit of God is always present offering the hope of new life:

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you (Ps 139:7–12).

In the midst of the chaos and darkness of the world, the Spirit of God is present; and “it is the Spirit who gives life” (John 6:63).

What we have in Gen 1 is a movement from disorder, emptiness, and darkness, to light (v. 3), and order (through dividing and naming in vv. 4–10), and filling (vv. 11–31). And significantly, how does God bring about this order and the fullness of life? And God said (vv. 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 28, 29). Through the ten words of God, order and life is brought into the world. To the implied orthodox Hebrew reader, the message of Gen 1 at this point is crystal clear: it is the word of God that brings order and life. The whole of human society must be founded upon and directed by the word of God the Creator. To do otherwise is to revert back to the disorder, emptiness, and darkness of the original chaotic mass.

The theology of Gen 1 is not only that God is the Creator of the cosmos, but that he is the God who acts through the power of his Spirit and word to transform chaos into order, to transform the emptiness of non-life into the fullness of life, and darkness into light. The theology of Gen 1 is more than just the time frame of creation. In fact, the six day structure of Gen 1 should prompt us to ask why God took his time! Why take his time leisurely over six days rather than complete everything in the blink of an eye? Why start off with just one measly person, then two, in a small garden? Why not the whole earth full with ten billion people right from the start? Is such not possible for a God who created the cosmos ex nihilo? All of this signals that God has chosen to start off small, and to move progressively in time to bring about the full fruition of his purposes.

In sum, the six days of the ordering of the initial chaotic mass and filling it is a statement of the kind of God that God would prove to be. Even the very way in which God created the world was a dramatic proclamation concerning his intentions in history. This means that God actually had us in mind when he created the world! He deliberately created the world in the way that he did in order to teach us about himself and about his plan for the subsequent history of the world, and we miss the point of Gen 1 if we fail to see this. God created the world the way he did because he wants us to see that he is a God who moves in human history from small to big, from disorder to order, from darkness to light, from death to life. The theology of Gen 1 is a theology of the gradual growth of the kingdom of God on earth through the power of God’s word and Spirit. When we have understood this, then we have no reason ever to lose hope, no matter how dark the world around us may seem to be. The theology of the cross and resurrection has been foreshadowed from the very beginning.