I have lately been thinking much about this picture above. As we are going through Revelation in Church and hearing Pastor Kevin talk about the new earth, I have been reminded about the common misconception that as Christians our end goal is to get to heaven. Now there are many problems with this idea such as the goal is heaven which is actually a secondary blessing of our saving faith whereas our main focus is God, we get to walk with God like Adam and Eve did, we will worship God without the negative effects of sin, all that we do in eternity will be God glorifying. As great as living forever in paradise may be I'm looking forward to being as near to God as I can.
The next problem is that we have the "Greek/platonic idea" of eternity that just isn't correct. We will not be wearing diapers, floating in the clouds, playing harps. We think of our lives on earth as the waiting room before we get to eternity, but really heaven is going to be the waiting room until God redeems the earth.
This is what we are looking forward too, a new earth without the corruption of sin. so the next question is, is this new earth brand new like a cosmic mulligan? Thankfully PK helpfully talked about this word "new" as really meaning "newness of quality" not of kind, so really we are looking forward to a RENEWED heaven and earth.
Why is this important? because I believe that many of our ideas of the earth and Jesus are just like the cartoon at the top. We see the world as this great ship that is sinking due to Satan's evil and Jesus was able to come and save many off of this sinking ship. But this is a poor view of God's redemptive plan.
Satan has some measure of victory in this picture, he was able to sink the good ship God created and only by luck was Jesus able to save some of Satan's victims. Satan may be destroyed in the end but he sank the ship.
If we were to believe that this world is too far gone and we just need to believe in Jesus to get onto safety then we believe that Satan is victorious in this world in a way. But this is not true. The world is not a sinking ship, God's redemptive plan is not only for humanity but for all of the universe. He is redeeming a people for himself to place on a renewed earth that sin in not only not present but not even longed after.
I cannot wait for the day when sin will lose all appeal, that I will have no attraction to sin whatsoever.
That is the glorious vision of God's work not the cartoon above. He is so utterly victorious that it only looked as though Satan would have a small victory but in the end "one little word shall fell him!"
