History = His Story

Ecclesiastes 3:1 “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.”

I was reading a couple articles today on time and history from a Judeo-Christian perspective by Dr. Robert Charles Sproul. The old American idiom: "What goes around, comes around", suggests a cyclical-progression of history (that history repeats itself) is not really accurate as history is linear-progressive by the relationship of matter and motion which creates the passing of time (the past, the present, and the future). As the Bible says, the world has a beginning, and that at the beginning an action began, a movement guided by the divine providence to an ultimate telos – a culmination of purpose, aim, or goal. The world itself looks forward to a future that has been ordained by its Creator.

The article stated that the term eschatology in our theological vocabulary refers to the study of the eschaton, or the end times. It is a mistake to think of the “end times” as being in the future. The end times have already begun as a present reality initiated by the coming of Jesus and emphasized by His resurrection from the dead on Easter morning and by His ascension to the right hand of God, where He reigns now, a King of kings and Lord of Lords. It is important for us to understand that the end of the world does not indicate an annihilation of the world, but a renovation and redemption of it. And that final renovation of creation is cosmic in scope. The question of life after death, the issues of heaven, hell, and resurrection are all integral to our study of these end times in God’s history. As people that live in the present, we nevertheless have the future promises set forth by God in His Holy Word as an anchor for our souls.

John 14:1-3 “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

Our hope is that which rests upon a certain conclusion in the future that God promised for His people. We live our lives in the midst of the waves of chaotic life that crash against us, but we ate not tossed to and fro without an anchor. Our anchor is the promise of God for the future that He has laid up for His people. It is easy to become so preoccupied with the distractions of the present that we forget the past and almost ignore the marvelous reality that God has already accomplished for His people in history. History is the domain of Christ’s incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and ascension, and we can’t understand our hope for the future without understanding those things that God has already brought to pass in His plan of redemption. So how we live today is in large measure determined by how we understand the past history as well as how we understand the future. The gospel encompasses all of time, from beginning to end. Dr. Sproul identifies that it is because God is a God of history, a God of purpose, a God of telos – His story - a culmination of purpose, aim, or goal that the present has eternal significance and right now counts forever.  

In Christ, Brian