IN WHAT DO YOU HAVE HOPE? Hope is defined as a feeling of anticipation or a desire that a certain thing will happen. Research reveals that hope is important in us managing stress, dealing with anxiety, and coping with adversity. (Psychology Today, 2019).  Christian have hope! In what is their hope?

This series addresses the concerns we all have: the concern for sin, evil, death, dying, and what happens after we die. Is there hope after death? When God created us, humans, he intended for us to live forever in a loving, peaceful relationship with him. But this relationship has been broken by sin.

Here, we address the origin of sin and look more closely at death and dying.

But, instead of looking at death negatively, we look at it in the context of hope, the promised hope based on what Jesus did for us when he died and came back to life again. 

From the Sabbath School Adult Bible Study Guide 2022 Quarter 4: Sabbath.School (See also Hope Sabbath School and 3ABN Sabbath School)

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Let’s invite the Spirit of God

Father, We Look forward with anticipation to the Second Coming of our Lord. Help us hold on to this hope until He returns. In Jesus’ Name Amen

The Christian hope is in the promise that they will be raised immortal when Jesus returns and wakes them from the dead. Their hope is in living eternally with God in a new heaven and new earth without sin and evil.

The Christian hope is not new. It is the same hope Christ’s followers had in His day. Rather, Christian hope reaches back to the ancient hope passed on by the patriarchs (the ancient fathers) and the prophets.

In the Old Testament times, God’s special messengers his prophets and Israel’s spiritual leaders had hope in the resurrection. The resurrection is the time when God will wake up His people from the dead at Jesus’ Second Coming. For instance, according to John 8:56, Jesus mentions that Abraham saw the time of Jesus’ day, in a vision and was filled with joy.

56 Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” (John 8:56)

Furthermore, Jude in Jude 1:14,15 says that Enoch, who lived before the Great Flood in Noah’s day, prophesied about the Second Coming.

14 Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints,

15 to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” (Jude 1:14, 15).

Moreover, the book of Hebrews talks about the heroes of faith. They are described as waiting for their heavenly reward. But their expectation was not immediate. They understood that it was a future reward that they would obtain when we all receive it together according to Hebrews 11:39, 40.

39 And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise,

40 God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. (Hebrews 11:39-40)

These verses could be troubling if we are under the notion that these heroes of faith are already in heaven with God and have received their reward.

For, here it is pointing out that they have not received the promise. Why, because they will not obtain it apart from us. In other words, we will all be resurrected at the same time when Jesus returns the second time.

It is important to know that only the people who accept Jesus as their Savior will have eternal life. John makes this clear in 1 John 5:11, 12.

11 And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.

12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. (I John 5:11-12)

Another point here is that John renounces the idea of the immortality of the soul, in which all will live eternally both believers and nonbelievers. He points out that there is no eternal life apart from a saving relationship with Christ. Thus, the only individuals who will experience eternal life are those who accept Christ as their Savior. 

It says: “In him [Christ] was life; and the life was the light of men.” It is not physical life that is here specified, but immortality, the life which is exclusively the property of God. The Word, who was with God, and who was God, had this life. Physical life is something which each individual receives. It is not eternal or immortal; for God, the Life-giver, takes it again. Man has no control over his life. But the life of Christ was unborrowed. No one can take this life from Him. “I lay it down of myself,” He said. In Him was life, original, unborrowed, underived. This life is not inherent in man. He can possess it only through Christ. . . .

. . . We derive immortality from God by receiving the life of Christ, for in Christ dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. This life is the mystical union and cooperation of the divine with the human.—Maranatha, p. 302.

The New Testament hope is therefore centered in Christ. In Christ, we have the hope that our mortal existence will one day become immortal.

Thus, the only hope we have that we will live forever someday in the future comes from having faith in the saving power of Christ alone.

Why is the hope of heaven and eternal life so important to the Christian? Find out, Day 2 Hope Beyond This Life

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