Jonathan Gallagher

"The world has a cancer and the cancer is man." A shock introduction to the Club of Rome's report on future trends--shocking, but still true! Future Shock announces another book title; What Future Earth? asks another.

So what of the shocking future? No longer is talk of some doomsday left to cranks and misfits. It comes from the scientists and philosophers, the technologists and sociologists. `Abandon hope all who enter here' is the old motto now applied to studies of human future. They speak of an age of abandonment, of the annihilition of hope, of the important present as against the uncertain future. Who needs to be reminded about the desperate situation we face right now?

No wonder why people live today without thought of tomorrow! There well may be no tomorrow...

Talk to people on the street about what they hope for, and what answers do you get?

"I hope I pass my exams."

"I'm hoping to buy a new car."

"I just hope I find someone special to marry."

"My hope is to get to the top of my profession."

"I hope to be able to retire to a beautiful house in the country."

How many would say, "I'm hoping to live forever"? "Some hope," you may say. Immortality is perhaps the greatest dream we have. To live on, forever and ever, not having to wait for death, that terrible enemy to come and destroy us and all our hopes.

But that's just a dream, they say. No one can live forever. Such a hope can never be true.

Can it?

Yes! The greatest truth that Jesus came to bring was the assurance that we can live forever. His teaching was not just good ideas and moral thoughts. He came to show us the way out. More than that he is the way out--for only if he is what he claimed to be--God himself--can what he said be true.

Take another look at Jesus' greatest promise. For if this is true, then what a fantastic future is possible! If the promise is not true, then Jesus was a liar, and it is all a fraud.

"I will come again." Who said it? Jesus himself. When? Right before his crucifuxion, when he wanted to tell his friends what was the most important. You might even call the promise Jesus' last will and testament. His final instructions--the essential truth he came to communicate; the greatest hope he could ever give.

Knowing that Jesus has come to save us and heal us, knowing him as our best and closest friend, what do we want to know?

When will we be with him?

Imagine. You're on you way home after a trip away. You call your wife/ husband. You say that you'll be home soon.

The reply: "Oh, don't come back just yet. Not right now. Call me later. Don't worry about coming back yet..."

How do you feel? Worried. Concerned. Most of all, you would wonder about your relationship, because that response is not one of anxious expectation from a loving friend.

So why did Jesus tell his friends he was coming back? Because these were the only words that could give them hope in the present and confidence in the future. Listen as if you were one of them as you hear the words: "I will come again." (see John 14:1-3).

How do you feel? Threatened? Terrified? Or happily sure because the one you know as your truest friend is not giving up on you and leaving you forever, but promising to come back for you!

That's what Jesus wanted to communicate about his return. He didn't want it to be seen as a threat. He does not want people looking for his coming out of fear, but anxiously wanting him back, because of what his coming means.

So what does it mean? Why does Jesus return?

Why Does Jesus Return?

Question for you: Do you honestly believe we can solve the world's problems? Are we capable of working it all out--all the fighting and killing and murdering and raping and hate and abuse and all the other evils that are our worse plague? Or what of the famines that haunt a third of the world like some spectre of doom? Or the threat of self-destruction through global pollution or AIDS or germ warfare or atomic annihilation? Or continued over-population or resource depletion or energy famine or... or... or...

For if you think that somehow humankind will manage to muddle through you simply don't understand the situation. Like dancers waltzing on the Titanic as the ship goes down...

Why does Jesus come? To end all this. To make a longed-for end to sin and evil, to create his kingdom of righteousness.

Why does Jesus come? To solve the problems that we have caused and cannot solve. To re-make the earth, to transform it into a new planet of peace and harmony.

Why does Jesus come? To bring sight to the blind, to heal the lame and .... to make real all his promises. To totally change not just the physical world, but even the way that we think!

Why does Jesus come? To complete what he has been working for since the beginning: to prove his true nature against the lies of the Devil, to vindicate his trustowrthyness, to show right is absolutely right. To end the war!

Why does Jesus come? Ultimately because he has to--because he loves his friends and wants them with him forever. Those who choose to go their own way will have that privilege, even though it leads to their self-destruction. And in order that evil may eventually be wiped out from his universe, Jesus comes to reward everyone according to the choices they have made: to have eternal life with him, or to be left out in the darkness of separation from God, which is the second death. For exclusion from God means non-existence, the inherent result of choosing to go your own way of rebellion and selfishness...

Jesus comes most of all because of you. Like the relationship of parent-child; like husband-wife; like friend-friend.

Coming to Save

A climber huddles on a tiny ledge high in the Scottish Cairngorm mountains. Lost and alone, he watches helplessly as the sun slowly slides down the sky into the west. His broken leg sends searing stabs of pain to his brain, making him flinch as he realizes his total isolation.

How did it come to this?

The trip had been planned properly. He was an experienced mountain climber. Together with his friends he had taken every precaution. But then an unexpected storm rushed in, they missed their way, and then...

The accident. Both friends gone, surely to their deaths. Now only he was left, in frozen agony waiting for the night, and his sure death. For he knew that he has no hope of seeing morning. No hope at all.

He cries with the pain, with the fear of death, with the pointlessness of it all. All around the world grows ever darker, ever colder, ever more menacing.

Then through his pain-filled nightmare-dreaming, he hears a sound. The rough clatter of a helicopter. The Mountain Rescue Service. He struggles to lift his arm to wave. He sees nothing. But the sound comes closer, closer.

Then out of the whirling storm comes a man. Dangling on the end of a rope, he comes down from the skies, his free hand beckoning. He shouts through the noise:

"Come on, take hold of me." And as the injured man weakly tries to get up, the rescuer catches him, ties him to the rope, and together they are winched up to the safety of the helicopter. Safe, saved. Rescue from the skies!

When?

So when is all this coming down? This vital news that nobody seems to know about--when is it going to happen?

Nobody knows. Not the date and time. All Jesus says, is "Soon.". Because he knows us only too well. When do you get ready for a visitor? The day before. When do you revise for an exam? Just beforehand. If Jesus is coming on December 25, we'll all be busy getting ready on Christmas Eve, and not before. That's one reason.

Another is that the date is related to what we do. How we respond. What happens here on earth. Who says to a farmer, "What date are you harvesting your wheat?" We know that the wheat is harvested when the time is ripe. Jesus made that very clear: what we should be concerned about is the time of preparation.

But one thing is clear: HARVEST TIME IS NOW!

Just take a look around you with your spiritual eyes open, and then say that it's OK! Only an ostrich would say that!

Jesus spoke about discerning the signs of the times.

Red sky at night, shepherd's delight; Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning.

So goes the proverb in English. Most countries have something similar. They said something like that in Jesus' day. ()

Wake up! he says. Don't delay. Watch. (see Mark13).

Jesus is coming back. And how!

How?

Certainly not in the way some people have expected. Some believe he's here already. Some say he comes "spiritually" and has to be discerned by the "eye of faith". Some say he comes through prayer or through communion or through the church. Some say he comes at death.

But that's not what Jesus himself said. How could he have made it more plain? If it were not so, Jesus said, I would have told you. And the angels tell Jesus' followers at his ascension that Jesus will come back in the same way as they have seen him go.

Quietly? No! "shout, voice, trumpet 1 Thess 4

Invisibly? No. See son if man coming in clouds, every eye see him

Undramatically? Lightning flashing from east to west

Spiritually? This same Jesus will come as he left (see Acts 1:11).

No. This return of Jesus is quite definitely an earth-shattering event that will literally wake the dead (see 1 Thessalonians 4). How could you miss it? And Jesus himself warns against anyone who suggests he's come secretly (secret places, desert)

So what happens? Mountains and rocks fall, and the wicked wish to die--but interestingly this same glory is life to his friends. The dead in Christ rise.

No secret rapture. No invisible coming. A glorious, marvellous, amazing event that nobody will miss. God's waiting friends call out,   "we have waited for him and he will save us."

This is the truly blessed hope. The only hope.

On the beach

Our family had spent a whole day on the beach. Five-year-old son Paul seemed to have turned into a civil engineer: the whole area of sand around us had become a major building site of dams and castles, canals and roads, lakes and bridges.

How happy he was as he surveyed his completed work. "Look Daddy," came the proud voice, "Look at all I've made."

And of course I told him how good it all was. For it really was something to see--the product of a whole day's hard work.

"I hope we can come back again tomorrow! Can we, Daddy? I really hope we can..."

And of course we could.

Next day on the beach there was nothing of that great empire to be seen. The tide had wiped away every trace. Not a castle remained, not a single bridge. All gone.

You should have seen Paul's face. Surprise, confusion, disappointment--all at once.

"Where has it all gone, Daddy? I was hoping so much to make it even bigger today. I was really looking forward to it."

And then the tears, and the hard explanations.

So much for our human hopes. Like sandcastles on the beach, swept away without trace by the incoming tide. Hopes for achieving this or that, for making something enduring, for being powerful, famous, even worshipped.

Tomorrow comes, and all these vain ambitions have vanished as completely as a beach washed clean by the surging sea. Both father and son learned a lesson together, looking at that smooth, unbroken sand shining in the morning sun.

No human hopes are worth hoping in. Promises not worth the paper they are written on. Desires cannot last. Hopes die like fading flowers, turning to dust and ashes.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes: without God there is absolutely no hope.

But with God? Ah, then! He is the only hope in a world of hopelessness.

Rescue from the Skies

Langdon Gilkey in Shantung Compound tells his experience of being interned with other Western missionaries by the Japanese in World War II. They live under a harsh regime, with only the basic essentials of existence. Punishment for brekaing the rules are severe; the conditions intolerable.

This situation affects the missionaries' faith in different ways. There is conflict between them; they seek different solutions; they question why this has happened to them.

Conditions grow worse during the course of the war. They pray for an end--to their imprisonment, to their suffering, to their doubts.

Unable to help themselves, they can only hope for something better in the future. Their greatest desire is to be free, to be rescued from their hopeless state.

Then one day they learn that the end of the war is in sight. Initially they are thrilled, excited. But the prison commandant makes it clear that all prisoners will be executed if the camp is attacked. Now they fear the more, for the end of imprisonment looks like being death, not release.

Then one day, one glorious day, they hear the sound of many planes. As they pass overhead, parachutes appear. The guards drop their weapons and run. And the liberating troops enter the prison compound, to a welcome that cannot be described.

Rescue. Release. Liberation. Hope realized, promise fulfilled, prayer answered.

Just a faint hint of what it will be like to see the Great Liberator descending the skies with all the clouds of heaven; to be released from this prison world of sin and evil; to be caught up together with our loving Lord and to be taken home with him for all eternity.

What a hope! A hope sure and certain! The blessed hope!

The only hope!

©2001 Jonathan Gallagher