Why eschatology is important for every believer in every generation
Eschatology is important for every believer primarily because hope is important for every believer. The coming end is not all a matter of “times and dates” (as Paul assures us in 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11). For the Christian, the eschatological is the glorious inbreaking of the kingdom of God into this present world of brokenness, the sovereign day when He will make all things right, wipe away every tear, establish everlasting righteousness, and, ultimately, come to dwell with humanity forever on the earth.
The end times, rather than being relegated to the last chapter in our systematic theology books, should be seen as the comprehensive horizon of all our theology. Why is this? Because our God is a God of the future, a God of covenant promise. He is, as Paul said, a “God of hope” (Rom 15:13). He is always before us, calling us forward on this exodus, motivating by the revelation of a promise land, a “city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:10).
As the firstborn from the dead, Christ has, in a sense, torn the veil of time and set himself in that future kingdom. As “Christians”, we have also gone through the veil and seated ourselves with Him (Eph. 2:6). Therefore, in the broken here and now, we have the capacity to experience every benefit which citizenship to Christ’s future kingdom can afford.
Hope is what characterizes the Christian experience in this intra-advent age of “already but not yet”. We have been saved into a “living hope” (Rom. 8:24; 1 Pet. 1:3). It is living because the same Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead now lives in us, as a guarantee of our future glory (Rom. 8:11; 2 Cor. 5:5; Eph. 1:14). The writer to the Hebrews sums this up when he defines salvation as tasting “of the powers of the age to come” (Heb. 6:5).
Hope produces a groaning dissatisfaction with the present state of things, a longing cry for the surety of God’s promised vision. Intercession is the supreme vocation of the Christian, and hope is the seedbed of intercession; for what is prayer if not a calling of the future into the present. It’s a “looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Pet. 3:12). Without a correct conception of the future, therefore, sustained intercession is unlikely. It’s because of this “unquenchable hope” that is in us, fueled by the sight of another age, that we are compelled again and again to approach the throne of grace and beseech the Father to stretch out His mighty right arm and establish righteousness on the earth.
“Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present. If we had before our eyes only what we see, then we should cheerfully or reluctantly reconcile ourselves with things as they happen to be. That we do not reconcile ourselves, that there is no pleasant harmony between us and reality is due to our unquenchable hope. This hope keeps man unreconciled, until the great day of the fulfillment of all the promises of God… This hope makes the Christian Church a constant disturbance in human society, seeking as the latter does to stabilize itself into a ‘continuing city’.” (Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope)
Friedrich Nietzsche once infamously said, “Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man.” With a statement like that, is it any surprise that he descended into mental collapse and died from a nervous breakdown?
Professor Hartke, you quoted Moltmann, but I’ll be quoting you… You da man!
Sarah Sun Kim
Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Who is that in your picture? It’s scary!
matthartke
Monday, February 26, 2007 at 12:30 am
I’ll take that as a compliment.
Ask someone who’s at least a decade older than you, and he might be able to tell you who that is in my pic.
Sarah Sun Kim
Monday, February 26, 2007 at 1:36 am
Is that Bette Midler?
mollymosack
Monday, February 26, 2007 at 2:53 am
Really, Sarah…who is in that picture? It’s scary…
Esther Myung
Monday, February 26, 2007 at 5:38 am
matt, you stole my next post! but, nicely put.
Steve & Amanda
Monday, February 26, 2007 at 8:40 pm
I love this community!
matthartke
Monday, February 26, 2007 at 11:13 pm
for real, b/c I was just majorly confronted on eschatology and the value of understanding it. *someone* told me that the “end times” is a construed thought made up by man that organizaitons and people actively use to control and manipulate the naive. I said, have you actually read the Bible? it about ended there if you know what I mean.
Steve & Amanda
Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 1:12 am
[...] 27th, 2007 fellow IHOPer Matt Hartke just wrote on what I was going to write on next. even at risk of being called a copy-cat wordcaster [...]
getting a perspective of the End-Times… « {Steve & Amanda Offutt}
Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 3:15 am
Steve – was that guy in my class this afternoon?
David
Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 9:00 pm
david: no, I’m completely sure that my experience was not from the person in your class.
Steve & Amanda
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 1:19 am
Matt – wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!
You need to take the “which theologian are you” quiz again. You may score as a Moltmann this time – which would not be objectionable to me.
Richard Liantonio
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 5:31 am
Last time I got Barth first and Moltmann a close second. The reason I didn’t get 100% Moltmann was because I don’t apply his points politically.
matthartke
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Just a few descriptive words for your post……good, solid, meatty, moist. Ha.
nate doggy dog
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 12:31 pm
You went too far with moist. I can’t stand that word!
matthartke
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 3:39 pm
david: did someone actually say that in your class? anyway, my confrontation was w/ a non-IHOPer. I’ll leave it at that.
Steve & Amanda
Thursday, March 1, 2007 at 1:47 am
Ok Sarah… so who is the picture of for real?! I’m over 2 decades older than Matt and I have no clue!… so give us a clue.
lana hartke
Thursday, March 1, 2007 at 8:58 am
Hint: Bum ba-dum-ba, dum-dum-da! DUH-da da-da DA DAAAAH, DAH, DA-DA-DA-DA-DAAAA (ratatatatat). One of the best TV themes ever.
David
Friday, March 2, 2007 at 12:34 am
Moist? Uncalled for. Meatty is even questionable.
Glad to finally know who that is in your picture, Sarah. I won’t tell who it is since I didn’t actually guess; I had to be told. Even when I was told, I realized I would have never guessed it anyways.
mollymosack
Friday, March 2, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Molly, you can’t do this! You’ve experienced the pain, you’ve been on this side, you know what it’s like to be without knowledge. Don’t abandon us in the darkness! Don’t hide your light!
matthartke
Friday, March 2, 2007 at 6:01 pm
I changed my profile pic. I’ll reveal the identity of my last profile pic another time. The mystery continues…
Sarah Sun Kim
Sunday, March 4, 2007 at 1:20 pm
what’s wrong with you guys?
jing
Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 10:07 pm
An overabundance of easily misunderstood verbose and sarcastic humor… ?
matthartke
Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 3:24 pm