68 Sermon Illustrations on Future

Sermon on worry. How it affects us, how Christians should deal with it.

I. "MAD" Magazine and Alfred E. Newman.

II. Anxiety and the 20th century.

A. Anxiety is one of most widespread emotions.

B. Levels of anxiety.

C. Examples of major anxiety for us.

D. Effects of anxiety.

1) Causes majority of illnesses.

2) Cure sought in drugs.

III. Jesus' answer: he forbids worrying. (Just like everything else?)

A. "Therefore do not worry about your life."

B. Worrying is a major emphasis.

IV. Different types of worriers.

A. Happy-go-lucky.

B. Hyper-responsible.

C. Committed but confused Christian.

V. Balance.

A. Two truths:

B. Biblical backup.

C. Issue in this passage: selfish worrying that forgets God.

D. Most important - Worrying reveals a warped perspective.

VI. Common sense argument.

A. The limitations of the human life. 6:27

B. We worry about tomorrow, but trouble always hits you "today."

C. Enough bad things happen; worrying only doubles your pain.

VII. One reasonable worry.

A. Your relationship with God. 6:33

B. Maintaining the relationship.

#944

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Future trends in America that churches will have to face:

1. Erosion of the middle class. (Economic uncertainty ahead)

2. Epidemic of autonomy.

3. Polarization of young and old.

4. Cross-cultural conflict.

5. Ecology.

Sermon for Ethel Abrams and Evelyn Kelsall, "Distinguished Servants."

Psalm 121

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MAY THE LORD KEEP YOU

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I. Uncertainty of modern life. 121:1

II. Is your God big enough? 121:2,4

A. The God of Psalm 121 is the God of creation.

B. He is the God of the nations.

III. Is your God small enough? 121:5

A. Does your God care about YOU?

B. God is a watcher.

C. God sweats the details. Luke 21:18

IV. Does your God hold the future? 121:8

A. God protects us "now and forevermore."

B. If he does, should you be fearful right now?

C. Trust in God puts things in a different perspective.

Waves of change will confront Christians in the future, whether they stay in the United States or go to the foreign mission field. But the director of missions for the Boston Baptist Association believes uncertainty should not cloud one’s outlook with doom and gloom.

“Change is difficult to understand,” said Ignatius Meimaris. “Society likes to have quiet solitude. But as Christians, we have to say this is God’s opportunity. We have to learn more about him. From that perspective, it’s very healthy and I think that’s the perspective we should have.”

Meimaris was one of the featured speakers at a language leadership conference, “Preparing for Effective Language Ministry in the Twenty-First Century,” organized by Kentucky Baptists’ state language program director Tony Hough.

The Sept. 22-23 conference, however, could have been held in any venue across America. Attendees reflected the nation’s changing ethnic makeup, spanning such backgrounds as Chinese, Romanian, Korean, Hispanic, Haitian and Anglo.

Speakers addressed the shifting tides across the world and America, which was 80 percent white in 1980 but looks to become increasingly Asian and Hispanic.

The latter group is projected to overtake African Americans as the largest U.S. minority group by the year 2000, according to David D’Amico, professor of evangelism at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky.

“Envisioning the future for world evangelism is an art and not a science,” D’Amico quoted one researcher in the field. “It may be dangerous, but it must be attempted and defined.”

Among the coming changes D’Amico reviewed are a continuing flow of immigrants to the United States, a need to minister to lower socio-economic classes in urban centers and a scarcity of trained ministers for these people groups.

In trying to reach Hispanics, Haitians and some Indochinese, churches and denominational agencies will have to “conceptualize” ministry forms, he said.

This may mean such unique outreaches as migrant worker churches that only meet for six months a year, short-term missions that only last until an ethnic enclave leaves an area and increasing numbers of bivocational pastors.

While such rapid change can bring conflict between various racial and ethnic groups, Meimaris said Christians should lead the way in bridging these cross- cultural gaps.

Successful churches in the future will be those willing to work with newcomers and remain open to the Holy Spirit’s leadership, he said.

“In some areas where there are a lot of Southern Baptist churches, some congregations wouldn’t let others come in, even though they were dying,” Meimaris commented. “If we’re in the Christian family, we better be accommodating to other believers.”

In Boston, a pioneering area for Southern Baptists, more than 80 percent of Southern Baptist churches don’t have their own buildings, he pointed out. So they meet in American Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian and Methodist churches and grange halls, he said. A few gather upstairs above bars.

Other denominations have even rented their buildings to small ethnic or Anglo SBC churches for payments of $1 per year, he said, displaying the kind of cooperation that needs to be extended to others.

In his opening speech, Hough also touched on the need for Southern Baptists to avoid fear when considering the future.

He compared the situation facing Americans with early Jewish Christians. He said first-century believers could either suffer persecution from the Romans if they stayed committed to Christ or retreat into the ease of old Jewish traditions.

“We face the same kind of (crisis),” Hough said. “In order to minister with ethnic and language groups, we are faced with challenges of huge proportions.”

In the first 25 years of the next century, Hough said the number of immigrants in some ethnic groups will double or even triple. Correspondingly, whites may expect to see their cultural dominance erode significantly, he said.

Coupled with daily reporting of global terrorism and tragedy, such changes leave many U.S. citizens feeling powerless and overwhelmed, he added.

He used the current book “Alien Nation” as an example of the current tidal wave of revulsion to immigration. The book argues Americans will become increasingly alien to each other, requiring an increasingly strained government to arbitrate between them. But Hough disagreed with that outlook.

“What (the author) does not factor in ... is the Christ who tears down walls, the Christ who heals pathological social, psychological and spiritual mutation, the Christ who gives a harmonious song of amazing grace for every race.”

Copyright (c) 1995 Baptist Press

In search of hope without tragedy.

“Hope: The Heart’s Great Quest” By David Aikman Servant 220 pp.; $9.99, paper

About 500 pages into “The True and Only Heaven,” his expansive book about the life and death of optimism, Christopher Lasch wondered about the possibility for a rebirth, not of optimism, but of hope. Optimism’s confidence in unending and universal progress, he had observed, lived on evidence that things were going well and were likely to go on getting better. With such a flimsy basis, optimism could not survive the persistent experience of tragedies that have so cruelly walloped the human family. Now the question is, can we find a hope to replace our lost optimism? What we need, Lasch mused, is “a more vigorous form of hope which trusts life without denying its tragic character.” Is there such a hope?

Though he does not include Lasch’s book in his impressive list of sources, David Aikman has written his own answer to Lasch’s question. There is indeed the sort of vigorous hope that Lasch looked for. There is a hope that is based in God’s promise rather than evidence of human progress. The promise is a new creation rather than gradual improvement on the old one. Thus, Christian faith offers a life beyond the “tragic character” of this world to hope for and Someone above our tragedy-prone existence to trust our hope in. It is, therefore, a hope that will survive adversity and tragedy. And, since our spirits need hope as much as our lungs need oxygen, I can only applaud Aikman’s passion to show that Christian hope is the one and only true hope.

To support his purpose, Aikman, for many years a foreign correspondent for “Time” magazine, succinctly surveys the faith of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam in 21 pages and then — in 47 fast-turning pages — neatly reviews the major thinkers from the Age of Enlightenment to the New Age to show that other religious faiths offer no hope at all and that any hope that secular thought offers is a false one. This done, he reviews what the Bible along with selected theologians teach us about Christian hope. All this is done with the sprightly style and easy-to-open packaging that we would expect from a seasoned reporter.

Aikman shows quite splendidly that what Christians are given to hope for is a life of bodiless blessedness after we die and a good world for us all to live in later on. But just as important as what we may hope for is who we put our hope in — not ourselves nor signs of progress, but the Maker of the universe who is now Christ the Lord.

But granted the greater importance of what we hope for and in, it is also interesting to think about the sort of experience that hope is. Aikman tries out a few definitions and quickly rejects them; hope, he cautions, is not a desire or a wish. Nor is it a disposition. It is, as the Bible suggests, more like an eager expectation — which is close enough, I suppose — except that eagerness is, after all, a lively desire, and we often expect things we certainly do not hope for (“Expect the worst and hope for the best.”).

But not to quibble about definitions of so slippery a thing as what actual hoping is. Aikman senses the difficulty, so he offers a few vivid metaphors, like this one: “Hope is like the lion in the forest, triumphant over all the animals, patient, never hurried, always king of his domain.” Taste in metaphors, as in all else, is indisputable, so enjoy this one if it illumines what you do when you hope.

What motivates Aikman, in any case, is the effect of Christian hoping on daily living. Christian hope provides its own evidence in the miraculous manifestations of its power in the life of people who have it. It is fitting, then, that Aikman should save to the last chapter a review of how Christian hope for the next world “revolutionizes” the “way ordinary people live their lives” in the present one.

It is probably true that most Christian people do not spend much time “eagerly expecting” life in heaven or in the new earth. What most of us consciously worry about and hope for is fixed on the same worldly things that everybody else hopes for. We hope for the good things we eagerly desire for our families and friends and for ourselves, things we believe are possible, things none of us can be sure of. We hope for our children’s safety, happiness, and success. We hope for our own comfortable retirements. We hope for the healing of our spouses’ diseases. And the like. (Saint Paul says that we are most miserable if we have hope only for this life, but it is equally true that we are also pretty miserable if we have no hope for this life.)

So it seems natural that we should want to know how our Christian hoping for life in God’s future affects our chances of getting what we most hope for in our present. Is there any connection? Aikman is eager to prove there is. And, as a triumphant climax to his objective research, he offers us several personal examples of “The Fruits of Hope.” The fruits are harvested from some ordinary people’s extraordinary experiences of the power of hope. He tells their stories, quickly, without commentary, on the run, like those nifty little paragraphs at the front of “Time” that tell us what we really need to know about the week that was.

A man on his way to a golf game gets a message that his daughter was seriously hurt in a car crash. He bolts for the hospital. On his way, he prays with just “a flicker of hope that someone was listening.” There was. The man’s daughter survived and is, besides, now happily married.

A woman whose marriage is on the skids is sailing off Hawaii and sees a double rainbow over the island and reads it as a sign of hope.

A young lady plagued by an ugly skin disease goes to a Billy Graham rally with hope for a cure. She got what she hoped for and is now a professional model, high on the power of high hopes.

Aikman’s own marriage had broken down before he got it into his head to write a book about hope. While he researched and thought about hope, he and his wife were reconciled and now have a new hope for their family.

These are the sort of “fruits” that Aikman offers to show how Christian hope affects — in a “revolutionary” way — how “ordinary people live their lives.”

What can I say? Aikman’s “fruits” baffle me. Does he mean to say that putting our hope in Jesus Christ for the other world gives our hopes for life in this world a better chance of coming true? But where is the connection? Maybe he means that God rewards us for hoping for eternal life by giving us what we hope for in this one. Or maybe he means that Christian hoping emits such a potent psychosomatic energy into our lives that we make our own hopes come true. Then again, it may be that Aikman has no idea of how hope does it and wants only to celebrate the fact that it does.

Geriatric hopers like me will permit themselves some skepticism. We just have too many crushed hopes under our belts to be easily persuaded that our Christian hoping improves — in any predictable sense — the odds that our human hopes will come true. Our hunch is that Aikman’s zeal for a nifty evangelical finish ran ahead of the sounder journalistic instincts he demonstrated along the way.

And yet, I do not wish to discount Aikman’s message. Certainly, when we keep hope alive for a victorious ending to a long struggle, we are encouraged to fight on and on until justice wins. Martin Luther King taught us that. And certainly a vivid hope for God’s kingdom rooted in Christ’s resurrection keeps the hope for victory alive. Bishop Tutu gives a resounding witness.

Certainly there is a therapeutic link between hopefulness and healing — both physical and psychological. It is being celebrated in the best of medical circles these days. And Victor Frankl has moved many of us to awe with his story of how the power of hope for what was obviously impossible — escape from the death camp — made the doomed life of prisoners who hoped to escape it infinitely richer than those who gave up hope.

It must be wonderfully true that nothing is ever accomplished, no poem written, no painting painted, no wall constructed, no enterprise begun, no family kept together, and no life reborn unless somebody hoped it could be done. But these are different sorts of links between hope and life than Aikman hints at with his amazing fruits. And besides, as Rabbi Maurice Lamm’s lovely book “The Power of Hope” (1995) assumes, the energy that links hoping to the getting of what we hope for is as powerful in the lives of people in general who have a hopeful disposition about this present life as it is in the lives of Christians in particular who hope for the promises about life to come. And besides, is there not a wee irony in celebrating the possibility that Christian hope of going to heaven improves our chances of putting off the trip? (”Everybody,” I have heard, “wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”)

I wonder whether the author’s fantastic “fruits of hope” would have persuaded Christopher Lasch that he had found the “more vigorous form of hope which trusts life without denying its tragic character.” I fear not. They seem instead to hint that Christian hope offers an escape from tragedy. And to that extent, it denies that life need have a tragic character. Perhaps Aikman’s evangelical enthusiasm for immediate and transparent results may have obscured his apologetic purpose. But I do not want to carp. He set out to demonstrate that the gospel offers a well-founded hope for a happy ending to our tragic history, and he succeeded, for which he deserves a good deal of praise for a lot of work well done. His book, in spite of my cautions about the ending, will give any reader a fine overview of all that has been thought and said about the gift of hope, for which nothing is more essential to the life of the human spirit.

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Copyright (c) 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./BOOKS & CULTURE May/June 1996, – Vol. 2, No. 3, Page 23 – – bcmay96mrj6B30236423

Preparing my annual baccalaureate sermon, I thrashed about for an appropriately generic, one-size-fits-all biblical text for those who don’t believe the Bible. I seized upon Numbers 13-14, Moses’ sending of the spies into Canaan to scout the Promised Land for the arriving Hebrews.

This class of graduates seemed tentative, unsteady, uncertain of their future in a downsized, devoluted American economy. This seemed the perfect text for a final sermon on their way out of Dear Old Duke.

The Hebrews stand at last on the threshold of the Promised Land. What lies ahead? Two groups of spies are sent out to reconnoiter. At the end of 40 days, they return with their respective reports for Moses and Aaron - a majority report and a minority report.

“The land is plentiful,” said the minority, “But the cities are strongly fortified.”

“Let’s go take the place!” exclaims Caleb. (Caleb means dog, take it as you will.)

The majority report is more pessimistic. “The people over there, why, they’re like giants! Next to them, we look like grasshoppers!”

The majority report begins by saying that the Canaanites are men, then it says they are big men, finally calling them Nephilim Giants! (cf Gen. 6:1-4)

Actually, the majority and the minority reports agree to a great extent. The difference lies in the response. Caleb says, “Let’s go for it; God is with us!”

But the people of Israel have a different reaction. “We should have died in Egypt! We had it better back in slavery!” they cry. “We’re going to die out here, eaten by these Canaanite giants!”

You see where I was moving with my sermon: Don’t worry, graduates; you can do it! We can build cars and computers as well as the Japanese! The economy will get better! Let’s go for the Promised Land - or at least a 2 percent higher GNP!

Yet, what interested me in this text was not the Israelites’ positive or negative attitudes, nor mine, nor those of the graduates. It was God, the one who had set this story in motion, who caught my attention.

When the Hebrews stop their whining, God gets angry. He says to Moses, loud enough for everyone in Israel to hear, “How long will I have to put up with these people? I’m going to choose a good people to love, then I’m going to kill all of you!” (Num 14:11-12)

Moses tries to reason with the Lord: “You don’t want to do that.”

God; “I’m God. I can do anything I want.”

Moses; “How is it going to look to the Egyptians? You’ve gone to all this trouble to bring us out of slavery, only to kill us? All the other nations, will talk about it. Their gods will say, “Yahweh is good at liberation, but he can’t pull off occupation.” Wasn’t it you who said you were slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love?”

God: “All right, all right. But I am not going to let you in until everyone who fell for that lousy report is dead.”

Suddenly, I no longer wanted to preach my little, conventional Power of Positive Thinking sermonette on success. I wanted to preach about a God who was large, prickly, anthropomorphic, a lot like us. I wanted to be in the presence of a God who needed mortals like Moses to go up and reason with him, in prayer, to hold him accountable to his promises, a God who had feelings and was capable of being hurt by the people he loved.

This is the God Israel has taught us to love. This is the God who, though often angry with us, never gave up on us; still despite our fears and disbelief, still loves us, even yet.

Philadelphia Temple Church was kidnapped by the past.

Its greatest pastor was Rev. Russell Conwell, who founded the seminary I went to. Conwell was a great motivator. His church began dozens of ministries in Philadelphia, started a school, and saw many of its young people go into full-time Christian service.

This was in the 1880s. 90 years later, they were still looking back to their past. Not much was happening in the present. When a new pastor came in the 1970's, he gathered the deacons in the conference room and shared some ideas he had for the church.

The deacons squirmed and fidgeted. Finally one of them pointed to a huge painting of Conwell on the wall and said, "I don't think Pastor Conwell would want us to move so quickly."

The new pastor got up, went over to the painting, flipped it over and said, "Pastor Conwell is gone. Let's look to the future."

The prophet Jeremiah learned to surrender to God even when His plans seemed to lead repeatedly to disaster.

1. He surrendered his future.

a. His very purpose in life was put on the line.

b. His first lesson in faith was to receive God's plans without fear.

c. His calling will not be an easy one.

2. He surrendered his family.

3. He surrendered his reputation.

a. He faced ridicule.

4. He surrendered his life.

a. He is beaten and imprisoned.

5. He surrendered his hope.

a. The destruction of Israel was his greatest test.

b. Yet he emphasized God's promises.

c. He never lived to see the restoration of the nation.

Jeremiah stands as a model of faith.

1. He had a certainty of purpose.

2. He knew God's promises, believed them, and asked God to fulfill them.

3. Jeremiah understood obedience.

#4421

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The Christmas issue of NEWSWEEK magazine purports to give readers "A Guide to the 21st Century." It is full of predictions about what politics, economics, technology, and even Americans themselves, will look like.

But, the folks at NEWSWEEK forgot something: the role that faith and values will play in shaping the twenty-first century.

Columnist Anna Quindlen best summarizes the tone of the NEWSWEEK's report when she declares that "the future will be grand."

Well, if you look at things from a purely materialistic point of view, Quindlen is right. The next century holds out the promise of significant advances in the fight against diseases such as AIDS, heart disease, cancer, and muscular dystrophy.

It will be a century where cars will drive themselves, NEWSWEEK reports; you will be able to watch every movie ever made whenever you want to watch it; even animals on the brink of extinction may be saved through cloning.

NEWSWEEK arrived at these predictions by extrapolating from the technological accomplishments of the past century. But this willingness to predict the future by looking at the past didn't extend to cultural trends. If it had, the future might not look so grand.

The twentieth century has been about more than technological advances. It was the century that introduced the world to genocide -- the systematic attempt to eliminate whole races.

And the twentieth century saw the West embrace what Pope John Paul II called the "culture of death." Millions of unborn children were killed simply because their births would have been "inconvenient."

Now, at the close of the millennium, the culture of death has extended to the elderly. We are in the midst of a push to legalize physician-assisted suicide and even euthanasia. And the nation remains deeply disturbed by a rash of bloody, senseless, school shootings. Our kids are run amok.

In his 1996 essay, "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died," novelist Tom Wolfe said philosopher Frederic Nietzsche was right in his prediction that humanity would muddle through the 20th century, living off the 'mere pittance' of the morality it had inherited from Christianity. But that inheritance is now overdrawn, spent.

So we come to the end of the 20th century with the prospect ahead for unbelievable technological advances, but with the nation exhausted by the moral bankruptcy of modern life.

So what does this really mean for the 21st century? The really big news may be not all of the gadgets and scientific accomplishments of which NEWSWEEK writes, but a renewed search for a coherent moral order. I believe people are hungry to rediscover the rich inheritance of Western civilization, the moral consensus provided by the Judeo-Christian tradition.

This is why Pope John Paul II predicts that the new millennium will usher in a springtime of evangelization. People hungry, confused, bewildered by the moral nihilism of the 20th century will look for something better, something more meaningful. NEWSWEEK may believe that man lives by bread alone, but human beings, hungry for something more, know better.

The key, of course, is for the Church to present the alternative to modern chaos, a biblical worldview, in a winsome and loving way. And if it does, the 21st century will be about more than gadgets and science, it will be a time when true hope and meaning are rediscovered.

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Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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Movie producer Woody Allen once gave the Yale University commencement address and said the following: "Our civilization stands at the crossroads. Down one road is despondency and despair. Down the other road is total annihilation. I hope we'll take the right road." Woody Allen was obviously trying to be funny, but his statement reflects the despair and pessimism of our times.

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Another version:

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." (Woody Allen)

In Greece, in the 4th or 5th century B.C., there was a war between two neighbouring city-states. A spy from one city was captured in the other city, and sentenced to be executed. But he insisted that he be granted an interview with the tyrant of that city, and when he got it, said "o great king, if you do not execute me, but instead allow me to live a mere five years longer, I will teach your favourite horse to sing."

The tyrant thought about it, and eventually decided, "what's five years? I can always kill him at the end of it." And he agreed, and the erstwhile spy was led away.

A few weeks after this, as the spy was in the stables playing the lyre to the tyrant's horse, two friends of his who had smuggled themselves into the city in disguise came to him to find out what was going on. He told them the story, and they said, "you're crazy! You'll never manage it, and in the end the king

will kill you!" To which our hero replied,

"In five years, anything can happen. The king may die; I may die: or, the horse may learn to sing." And he went on playing the lyre.

In 1949, half a century ago, Americans made some predictions about the year 2000 and what they expected: (US News & World Report, 12/28/98, p. 74).

88% believed a cancer cure would be discovered

82% thought there would be another world war

70% said we would not have reached the moon

60% predicted we would not elect a woman president

48% felt sure we would have a 30-hour workweek.

One correct prognostication in five is about average for uninspired predictors. Polls tell what the populace thinks, but they don't always tell the truth. Human predictions reflect opinions, but no one apart from God knows the future.

The Preacher, in Ecclesiastes 6:12, asked, "For who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun?" Of course, the answer is no one here. A little later in the book the Preacher observes:

I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, and the

battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise, nor

wealth to the discerning, nor favor to men of ability; for time and

chance overtake them all (Ecc. 9:11).

The new millenium, so close now we can nearly touch it, has many surprises in store. We wonder how we shall do spiritually. Will the church grow? Will we prosper in the Lord's eyes? Will we face terrible hardships and persecution? No one knows for sure.

One thing is for certain: God is in the future. He will direct this world as He pleases. He will plant and uproot nations (Jer. 18:7-10); He will uphold all things according to the power of His Word (Heb. 1:3); and He will send His Son Jesus back to us again one day (2 Th. 1:7-12).

God's plans matter. Our task is to be blameless and ready as God pursues His plans for this world and the one to come.

Then there was this lady in California who married first a banker, then an actor, then a teacher, and finally an undertaker. She said "one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go!"

Kefa Sempangi (whose story is told in the book A DISTANT GRIEF) was a national pastor in Africa and barely escaped with his family from brutal oppression and terror in his home country of Uganda. They made their way to Philadelphia, where a group of Christians began caring for them. One day his wife said, “Tomorrow I am going to go and buy some clothes for the children,” and immediately she and her husband broke into tears. Because of the constant threat of death under which they had so long lived, that was the first time in many years they had dared even speak the word ‘tomorrow.’

Their terrifying experiences forced them to realize what is true of every person: there is no assurance of tomorrow. The only time we can be sure of having is what we have at the moment. To the self satisfied farmer who had grandiose plans to build bigger and better barns to store his crops, the Lord said, “You fool! This very night your soul is required of you” (Luke 12:20). He had already lived his last tomorrow.

My Source: HURST STREET HERALD

Vol XIX, #33, 9/6/98

110 Hurst Street

Center, TX 75935

… … … … … …

Author: Larry DeLong

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GO FORWARD

I often get a chuckle when I walk into a barbershop filled with old men who are reliving their past. They talk about everything under the sun; from war stories to the depression days and their first hot rod that would blow the doors off any other car at 50 MPH. Some talk about the good ole days while others relive horror stories from the past. I enjoy listening to these stories, but I also realize, I must always come back to the reality of the present. The past is history and cannot be changed or lived. The only thing we can affect is the present and the only thing we can plan for is the future. A person cannot live in the present if he is always dwelling in the past.

After the days of Joseph, God blessed the Israelites, and they grew to a mighty nation while in Egypt. “Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we… Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens,” (Exodus 1:8-11). God heard their cries of affliction and sent unto them a deliverer, Moses. By God’s mighty hand Moses was able to lead them toward the promised land. Realizing their loss from all the slaves, Pharaoh’s army pursued after them and the Israelites became trapped at the Red Sea.

“And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness,” (Exodus 14:11-12).

Though the children of Israel wanted to return from whence they came, God gave specific instructions to Moses in verse 15. “Speak unto the children of Israel, that they GO FORWARD.” God’s instructions to man is not to regress back to the past but to continue on to the future. Many times during the trek toward Canaan’s land the Israelites would complain about the present situation and want to return unto Egypt. They complained, “We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick: But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes” (Numbers 11:5-6). This disobedient and discontented people never made it to the promised land, but perished in the wilderness.

As Christians, we are to set our sights toward the promised land of Heaven. We are continuously to be “looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). We must GO FORWARD, or perish. Looking back hinders our march forward. We are to learn from the past, but not dwell in it. We are to live in the present, but not waste it. We are to plan for the future, but not bank on it.

Enough For Today

Read: Matthew 6:25-34

Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. --Matthew 6:34

Life can be monotonous. The road that lies before us seems to stretch mile after mile across a flat, barren desert with no oasis in sight. How then are we to handle wearisome responsibilities when there's no foreseeable relief from our burdens?

Oliver de Vinck, severely disabled from birth, lay helplessly on his bed for all of his 32 years, unable to care for himself. Day after day and year after year his parents put every spoonful of food into his mouth, changed his diapers, and still maintained a happy home.

One day Oliver's brother Christopher asked his father how they managed. He explained that they didn't worry about the long succession of tomorrows that might lie before them. They lived a day at a time, asking, "Can I feed Oliver today?" And the answer always was, "Yes, today I can do it."

Jesus taught us how we can handle life's routine: "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble" (6:34). In faith--and with prayer--we can break life and its often wearisome tasks into bite-size pieces, entrusting the unpredictable future to the grace of Him who promises that "as your days, so shall your strength be" (Dt. 33:25). --VCG

The road I'm on is twisted, Lord,

Its end defies my view;

Teach me to take each step in faith

And leave the rest to You. --Gustafson

God supplies all our needs - one day at a time.

During a recent speaking engagement at the University of Illinois, I was handed this question from a student who hesitated to come to the microphone: "The state of humankind as we know it is on a serious downward spiral, and from my perspective, it’s only getting worse. Do you have any hope in the future of humankind and specifically our generation, and if so, why?"

I was both saddened and heartened to read his question. Overwhelmed by the maze of conflicts facing humanity, this young heart seeks a way out. And I believe he represents large numbers of young people in the world. Contrary to the "couldn’t care less" image we are often given of university students, he reveals how close to cynicism and pessimism many of them actually are.

Students today are not easily taken in; they do not trust readily. But their questions show a depth and an understanding of our world that is lost in the shuffle of postmodern cynicism and hopeless pessimism.

Here, G.K. Chesterton makes a significant point: There is a world of difference between sorrow and pessimism. He explains, "Sorrow is founded on the value of something, and pessimism upon the value of nothing." In terms of hope for the future, this makes all the difference.

Recently, I had breakfast with an atheist who repeatedly argued that there was no evidence for God. "Absolutely none," he said. Later he told me how much he loved his wife. "She’s dying," he said. After all the intellectual arguments had run into a headstrong willful resistance, I asked him why he loved his wife. He stared at me. "Don’t you see her as a unique woman of intrinsic value to you?" I asked. "Yes," he answered. "But how can she have such value," I replied, "if all life is nothing more than chemicals?" Suddenly, the conversation took a turn. As he got up, he said, "You just keep doing what you’re doing in life. You are bringing back common sense into our heads."

What thoughts occupy my mind as I ponder the world at this present time? Above anything else, like the young man from the university, that the hour is dark. Hope, like character, takes years to build and minutes to shatter. But friends, hope, like character, can rise beyond the moment to reinvest in what is of ultimate value - God’s eternal Word. This hope points in cumulative strength to the person and power of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you trust in that hope, He will not let you down.

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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

People have an intense interest in the future. Psychic hotlines have become big business as hurting people seek a glimpse of potential hope in their coming destiny.

Evangelical Christianity is not immune to this desire to know the future. Hal Lindsey's book, "The Late Great Planet Earth," made him one of the '70s' most popular authors. Even today Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's fictional series, "Left Behind," hovers near the top of the New York Times best sellers' list.

A "feeling" pervades many evangelicals that we indeed are the "terminal generation." The 2000 Baptist Faith and Message statement on "Last Things" is a judiciously written statement that provides insight into some of the most significant events in the future and at the same time can be embraced by believers from various millennial perspectives.

The initial sentence affirms God's sovereign control of history. Christians are confident in the final outcome of history because we believe that God is sovereignly directing history toward its God-ordained conclusion.

The next sentence affirms Jesus Christ's return. Significant areas of agreement exist among evangelicals in regards to Christ's Second Coming. First, evangelicals believe that Jesus Christ's return will be sudden, personal, visible and bodily. Second, believers should anxiously await Christ's return (Titus 2:13; Philippians 3:20).

Unfortunately, many Western Christians are so consumed with the things of this world that they seldom contemplate the glorious return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

A third area of agreement is that we cannot know the time of his return; however, Jesus encouraged his followers to be vigilant as we await his coming.

Finally, evangelicals agree that believers will live with Jesus Christ in a new heaven and a new earth.

While Christians differ in their understanding of the nature and chronology of Christ's Second Coming, there is much agreement on the events following his return. All agree that his return will be followed by the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment and the eternal state.

The Bible teaches that at Christ's return the dead will be raised (Daniel 12.2; John 11:24-25; 1 Corinthians 15). Both the righteous and the wicked will be raised; however, the chronology of this event is set forth differently by various millennial perspectives.

The statement on the resurrection of the dead is followed by the theme of final judgment. Jesus Christ will judge the living and the dead (John 12:47ff; Acts 17:31). We must be careful, as believers, not to misunderstand the nature of this judgment or fear the possibility that a true believer could be eternally condemned. The judgment of believers is for the purpose of bestowing degrees of reward (1 Cor 3:12-15).

The last judgment involves also the eternal state of unbelievers. Those who do not know God through his Son will enter into eternal punishment. Hell is a place where the unsaved will experience eternal conscious punishment.

In recent years some evangelical theologians have denied that there will be eternal conscious punishment of unbelievers; however, the scriptural evidence for eternal punishment is overwhelming. The doctrine of hell is a "tough" doctrine that should fill our hearts with pain and compassion for the multitudes that do not know our Lord. The contemplation of eternal punishment should be an incentive to aggressive evangelism and world missions.

The confession concludes with a pronouncement of the glories of heaven. Believers will live eternally with God in a new heaven and a new earth. John put it this way -- "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away" (Revelation 21:1).

We believe that Jesus Christ will return because he promised that he would. At the time of his return, every sacrifice we may have made for his kingdom will melt into insignificance as we enter into eternity with our Savior. Every longing that we as believers have had to see our Lord's face will be realized.

When we see him, we shall be like him (1 John 3:2), and we will fall on our faces to worship the one "who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood" (Rev 1:5b). At that time arguments over the millennium will be irrelevant as we cry out "to him be glory and power forever and ever" (Rev 1:6b).

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Full text of Article 10: Last Things

God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. According to His promise, Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth; the dead will be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment. The righteous in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.

Isaiah 2:4; 11:9; Matthew 16:27; 18:8-9; 19:28; 24:27,30,36,44; 25:31-46; 26:64; Mark 8:38; 9:43-48; Luke 12:40,48; 16:19-26; 17:22-37; 21:27-28; John 14:1-3; Acts 1:11; 17:31; Romans 14:10; 1 Corinthians 4:5; 15:24-28,35-58; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Philippians 3:20-21; Colossians 1:5; 3:4; 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18; 5:1ff.; 2 Thessalonians 1:7ff.; 2; 1 Timothy 6:14; 2 Timothy 4:1,8; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 9:27-28; James 5:8; 2 Peter 3:7ff.; 1 John 2:28; 3:2; Jude 14; Revelation 1:18; 3:11; 20:1-22:13.

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Cook is an associate professor of New Testament interpretation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

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God Will Make A Way

Read: Psalm 27

Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart. --Psalm 27:14

Rebecca was at her lowest as she drove her aging car to the day-care center to pick up her daughter. Her boss was making life difficult again. The landlord was raising the rent. And as a single mom, she felt all alone. "I'm trying my best," she told God. "Please help me."

Just then these words by Don Moen came on the radio in a song:

God will make a way

Where there seems to be no way;

He works in ways we cannot see,

He will make a way for me.

"Please do that for me, God," Rebecca pleaded. "I can't go any further."

The psalmist David too called out to the Lord when he was in desperate straits. He prayed, "Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice!" (Ps. 27:7). Then David testified expectantly, "Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart" (v.14).

God specializes in showing His power in hopeless situations. Israel was in just such a place when God parted the sea before them (Ex. 13:17-14:31). Daniel was protected in the lion's den (Dan. 6:10-23). Paul and Silas were delivered from prison (Acts 16:25-40).

God made a way for Rebecca too. A better job she had applied for months earlier suddenly opened up. The increase in her income would cover the rent. Then a family in her church made a newer car available to her.

If life seems to be closing in on you, don't despair! Trust God. He has promised to make a way. --DCE

Our unknown future is secure in the hands of our all-knowing God.

56,000 Hours

Read: Ecclesiastes 2:17-26

Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. --Ecclesiastes 2:24

By age 50, a person who has worked fulltime since college will have put in about 56,000 hours of work. Whether you're teaching school, working as a nurse, running a press, or whatever else you do, that's a lot of time.

Keep that in mind and look at what Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 2:17. "I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for all is vanity."

Think of 56,000 hours of worthless activity. That's 28 years of a career spent "grasping for the wind."

But wait. There's more. Keep reading in chapter 2. Hope shines through the otherwise dull efforts of the workplace--there can be satisfaction in work. Joy comes when work is done to please God (Eccl. 2:24-26; Col. 3:23-25). So all of our work, when done as a service to our Lord, has significance.

An airline employee who was struggling through a long delay in a flight's departure kept her composure as the passengers grew angrier. When someone asked her name so he could write a letter of commendation, she replied, "Oh, I don't work for this airline. I work for Jesus Christ."

Imagine the value of 56,000 hours of work done with that attitude! There's nothing better! --JDB

O what can I give to the Master,

The One who from sin set me free?

I'll give Him a lifetime of service

To thank Him for dying for me. --K. De Haan

Daily work takes on eternal value when it is done for God.

Someone said, "My past is gone; my present is passing; my future is arriving."

The best thing about the future is that it comes upon us by degrees, a day at a time. We can manage that! Whatever it holds, my future is mine: if it be fair weather, let me bask in the sun; if it be storms, let me bend with the wind.

The future belongs to those who can make adjustments.

"Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow" (Numbers 11:18).

ON FAILURE

“I want to remind you that failure is an event – it is not a person. Yesterday really did end last night. Today is a brand new day. That simply means that you can fail in an event, but by no stretch of imagination does that make you a failure as a person.”

ON YOUR FUTURE

“Dr. Tony Campolo says that your past is important because it brought you to where you are, but as important as your past is, it is not nearly as important as the way you see your future. Because the way you see your future determines your thinking today. Your thinking today determines your performance today, and your performance today has a huge bearing on your future.”

ON CHARACTER

“Character really does count. The reason is simple: With character and integrity, you’re going to do the right thing. And when you do the right thing, you have no guilt or regrets. With integrity you have nothing to fear because you have nothing to hide. Think about it for a moment. When you’ve taken both guilt and fear off your back, with those two albatrosses gone you are free to be the very best you can be, do the most you can do and, as a result, have more of the good things that life has to offer. That’s a winning formula.”

ON PLANNING

“In our world today people complain that they don’t have any time for themselves. But lack of direction – not lack of time – is the problem. Example: Chances are good you get at least twice as much work done on the day before vacation as you do on a normal working day. Here’s why: The night before the day before vacation you list on a sheet of paper or your laptop the things you must get done tomorrow. In short, you’ve got a game plan and you make a commitment to fulfill that game plan – and that’s exactly what you do. Question: Doesn’t it make sense that if one day of planning your activities can accomplish such dramatic results, that if you planned your family time, exercise time, recreation time and personal growth time, that your life would be much better balanced, and you would have more of the benefits of life? Think about that, follow through and good things will happen to you.”

ON INTEGRITY

“Chances are good that you would like to have more of the things money will buy and all of the things money won’t buy. Money is not the most important thing in life, but it is reasonably close to oxygen. Most of us like what money buys – nice clothes, a nice house, a nice car, nice trips, memberships at country clubs and a host of other things. But we love the things money won’t buy. It will buy a house, but not a home; it will buy a companion, but not a friend. Money will buy a bed, but not a good night’s sleep, and a good time, but not peace of mind. Message: Build your life on integrity. You can have more of the things money will buy and all of the things money won’t buy. Take that approach to life and I will see you at the top!”

It was April in the mountains of the West - which means you can experience any and all of the four seasons during one trip. We had actually started our journey in warm temperatures, but by the time we hit that mountain pass, it started to snow - I mean the thick, big flakes kind of snow. All of us actually started singing Christmas carols, even though it was just a few days before Easter. We were racing a deadline, so the snow was a mixed blessing. It was incredibly beautiful, but it was almost blinding at times, making our trip slower and more treacherous. And then we saw it: a thin line of sunshine between the bottom of the snow clouds and the tops of the mountains ahead. And we were excited because that was our future.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Brighter Skies Ahead.”

It was tough driving, and the journey was getting more difficult and more dangerous. But we were okay with that because we knew there were brighter skies ahead. And soon we actually were basking in sunshine everywhere.

It could be that you're driving a stretch in your life-journey right now that is pretty rough. You're getting tired of how hard it is to keep moving. You're anxious about what could happen and wondering how long it's going to be like this. You need to see some sunshine. And there is some. I love this simple reassurance of Psalm 30:5, our word for today from the Word of God, where He says, “Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” The Bible never denies that we will have seasons of hurt and weeping - but God wants us to see the sun beneath the clouds ahead. It won't always be this way. He promises that. He says that after tears in the night, there will be joy in the morning.

My wife was driving when we hit that heavy snow in the mountains. But when she saw that line of sunlight ahead, she said, “If I knew I had to drive like this all night, it would be tough. But I know there's better road ahead.” That is God's guarantee for every child of His. Whenever I think I've got a heavy burden, it helps me to think about the load the Apostle Paul carried - shipwrecks, beatings, imprisonments, rejection, death threats. Major storms. Perilous journey.

But he said, “We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all.” Paul calls all those painful times “light and momentary” - even though he's in the middle of some of that pain. He's comparing it to the sunshine ahead, knowing that compared to how good and how long the good times are going to be, this junk is light and momentary. So, he says, “we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Temporary. This too shall pass. And the day on the other side of this night is going to be awesome!

The difference is what you choose to fix your eyes on. If you focus on the storm you're in, you'll lose hope. You'll give up. But if you keep your eyes on the sun on the horizon - the rewards for your faithfulness, the deepening of your relationship with your Lord, the better thing God will give you in place of what you have lost - then there will be joy in this journey. So, keep on driving. Drive carefully and look down the road at the beauty that's on ahead. For just like us on that snowy, stormy day, you'll soon be celebrating a break in the clouds and a day that is flooded with glorious sunlight. No matter how dark it looks now, there are brighter skies ahead!

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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A headline in a newspaper recently caught my undivided, though mostly sarcastic, attention. It read: “Plane in Every Garage Is New American Dream.” While owning a plane is hardly anything I've been dreaming about, it is the dream of at least one airplane manufacturer whose company seeks to transform the way Americans use private planes with the help of new technology. A system of computerized displays and controls now makes navigating small planes much easier, while better financing makes owning one more possible. So it's still “to grandmother's house we go.” Except, it's no longer the horse — but the plane — that knows the way.

At least, that is their hope, and though it seems to me a far-fetched one, it also brings to mind Henry Ford's 1907 declaration: “I will build a motorcar for the great multitude. ...[N]o man making a good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces.”(1) This, too, was a dream met with skepticism.

Progress is always somewhere among us, urging us forward, beckoning us to respond. There are the advances I hope for: cures for cancer, justice for the abused. There are also the advances I believe are fearfully sought on altars of ethics and moral law. And there are always the advances marketers set before our eyes and question the quality of our lives without them.

Progress has an array of definitions, and some of them are quite contrary to one another. But whether progress itself is about how humanity lives or how long, the language itself is interesting. “If things can improve,” writes C.S. Lewis, “this means that there must be some absolute standard of good above and outside the cosmic process to which that process can approximate.”(2)

I scarcely think the Modernist's pursuit of progress was steeped in such a thought. Humanity's evolution is spoken of in terms of becoming better; man is the measure of all things, but he is continually at work upping the measure. At this, Lewis continues, “But there is no sense in talking of 'becoming better' if better means simply 'what we are becoming' — it is like congratulating yourself on reaching your destination and defining destination as 'the place you have reached.'“ Does better have an end? Where is progress aiming to lead us?

For some reason the push for a plane in every garage was met in my head with a disgusted refusal. I don't want a plane, nor do I want planes in my neighbor's garages. I don't want to define “better” as owning an aircraft, or switching transportation from road to sky. But if I'm honest, there is also the dynamic that I just don't want to think of life, as I know it, changing that drastically.

Yet whether I like it or not, it will. I have found G.K. Chesterton's advice in Orthodoxy helpful in sorting through the various “advancements” I will confront. Writes Chesterton, “We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening.”

However we are defining it, progress is always being defined and implemented around us. Change is going to happen. Some of these changes will shake us more than others. Some we may refuse to embrace, some we may have no choice in the matter. Still others may be an answer to prayer. But we are always moving. And I want to be moving toward the Good behind the good we seek, the standard we sense beyond us. I want to be moving toward home.

The world described in John's vision is a progression I can hardly imagine, though I know it is the measure: “'He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’ And he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ And he said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment'“ (Rev. 21:4-6).

There is a standard of good above and outside the progress we seek. He is seated on the throne. And He shall make all things new.

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1. Henry Ford as quoted in Warren Susman, Culture as History (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 136.

2. C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's, 1970), 21.

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Copyright © 2005 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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Recently, a rash of fundamentalist atheists has become a publishing phenomenon. Touting that God is a delusion, destructive to human life and civilization, and heralding the end of faith, these authors see only positive results at the end of atheism. Reason and rationality will conquer any “zealous” adherence or devotion to a transcendent God.

It’s fairly easy to identify with the concerns that motivate these authors towards atheism. Like them, I grieve over the violence perpetrated in the world in the name of God and religion. I can understand how Mother Teresa would poignantly wonder about God’s presence with her in the suffering wasteland of Calcutta. And certainly, I, like many others, have had life experiences that raise questions concerning God’s involvement in my life, and God’s love toward me. I can understand the despair-filled temptation towards agnosticism, or atheism.

Yet, the world many atheists envision without God or faith is overly optimistic, and ultimately unrealistic. Their beautiful portraits of what the world could look like if we only jettison our faith are painted with glowing brushstrokes of romantic imagery and language:

“This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of

its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only

miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us

is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any

experience we might wish to call ‘spiritual....’ No personal God

need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and

immensity of creation....love our neighbors, and [know that] our

interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the

opportunity to flourish.”(1)

I find this vision completely out of step with a world in which innocent civilians, even as I write this essay today, are being silenced and slaughtered by the thousands in Myanmar/Burma by an atheistic, military junta. Indeed, in light of the state of our world, an optimistic ending for atheism is as out-of-touch with reality as belief that the world is flat.

In fact, this vision of a godless world being a better world is shattered by the writings of the prescient prophet and atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche, the German philosopher who wrote in the nineteenth century, predicted what an atheistic society would look like. And unlike the pseudo-optimism of our popular atheists today, Nietzsche’s vision is harrowing and disturbing. “The story I have to tell,” he wrote, “is the history of the next two centuries.... For a long time now our whole civilization has been driving, with a tortured intensity growing from decade to decade, as if towards a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, tempestuously, like a mighty river desiring the end of its journey, without pausing to reflect, indeed fearful of reflection.” He claimed that the world was entering an “era of monstrous wars, upheavals, explosions and that there will be wars such as have never been waged on the earth.”(2)

Why such pessimism about the future of the world? Nietzsche argued that the actions of human beings had rendered God superfluous. In THE GAY SCIENCE his madman yells, “‘Where is God?’ Well, I will tell you. We have killed him, you and I.” He goes on to doubt if even reason and the advance of theoretical knowledge, as our modern-day atheists posit, could heal the “wound of our existence.” Indeed, science, reason, and history could not overcome the reality that human beings “can rise or sink to no other reality than the reality of our drives.” One of those drives, Nietzsche argued, is the will to power, ultimately fulfilled by rogue regimes in World War I, and in World War 2 by the Nazi regime and the Communist regime led by Joseph Stalin.

Thus, Nietzsche’s utter suspicion of reason calls the entire optimistic program advocated by popular atheists into question. God’s absence would not make for a better world, according to Nietzsche. Indeed, his picture of a world without God, without a divine Creator intimately involved in re-creation, is a very grim place filled with darkness, amorality, and despair.

In contrast to the godless future predicted by Nietzsche or our current atheistic prophets, the prophet Isaiah, even in the midst of warnings of exile, destruction, and suffering had a hope-filled vision of a world permeated with the presence of God: “The wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child will lead them... they will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6, 9). This vision of a God-filled future is what Christians should hope for and work towards, even as we wrestle with the challenges and the difficulties of a God-famished world.

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1. Sam Harris, THE END OF FAITH (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004), 227.

2. Quoted in Erich Heller, THE IMPORTANCE OF NIETZSCHE (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 5.

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Copyright © 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #20860]