“Now, But Not Yet” Apocalyptic Times: The Rev Dr. Bob Swope

I’m so excited to share that we’ve made a new friend who I hope will write for us often.

Bob is a retired Anglican priest …bi-vocational with an RN degree and 28 years practice in geriatrics, hospice/palliative care leadership beyond 20 years in the parish.

Hopefully, he will continue to share from that deep well of experiences…he will help us be about better things…

“Now, But Not Yet” Apocalyptic Times

The Advent season is once again upon us: four Sundays before the feast of the Incarnation, or Christmas joy at the birth of Jesus. The theme of the first Sunday in Advent is always a strange, somewhat foreboding message of the End Times: what Creation (heaven and earth), and human life in particular, can expect when the Messiah-King Jesus returns personally in glory to transform the physical heavens and earth into an eternal, heaven-infused “new heavens and earth” (Rev 21-22).  It’s an invitation to live fully in the “now, but not yet.” We have plenty of images, metaphors and hints of what is to come. It’s always a mystery, yet to unfold fully.

From the imagery we find in both Scripture and historical Christian Tradition,  this will be a time of reckoning, or “setting things right again.” Terrifying for those who spent their lives grabbing power over others, building up material wealth at the expense of others, and ignoring or mocking God. Too late do they realize their wasted, selfish lives and greed leave them wandering in a waterless desert where their souls devolve into something less than human.

Two famous Oxford professors, Clive Staples (C.S.) Lewis and John Ronald Ruel (JRR) Tolkien, knew each other in the mid-20th century. Both used Christian truths woven with Nordic myths and legends to write about allegories/glories of the End Times. Lewis’s last book in the Narnia series, “The Final Battle” and Tolkien’s third book of his majestic Lord of the Rings, “The Return of the King” both echo the struggles, triumph and victory of Light over darkness, Love over hatred, and Christ-figures conquering demonic evil once and for all. You can read them in all of their detail, or watch adapted films on television and YouTube. Like much of the Bible itself, it is better when you are able to read them with child-like imagination and wonder. Using right-brain exegesis, rather than stilted left-brain analysis of what is beyond our reasoning!

For those who have humbly realized their need for rescuing/saving/forgiveness by the Lord Jesus–through his sacrificial death and bodily resurrection– or others who never met Jesus by faith but put their hope in a God they trusted to be merciful and accepting, it will be a time of great rejoicing and comfort. Full of wonder, surprise and laughter at God’s amazing loving-kindness over the millennia. Abundant Life beyond this limited one. Life beyond dying and “going to heaven” (did you think that body-less heaven is the final resting place “up there” or the goal of life?) Think again. Heaven– always a part of Creation, just beyond the veil; full of holy women and men, angels before the earth was formed — is only a stopping place. To rest, to be immersed in love. Healed and become the perfected image-bearers of God– at a time only known to the Father. The Eschaton is about an Eternity lived out in Life after life after death.¹  In a heaven-infused new creation more vast and wonder-filled than we ever dreamed possible.

What’s to come at The End is beyond this Cosmos. A reality much more glorious and fulfilling beyond all of our evolving life and awareness. We get an inkling: the kingdom of God begins now, in this life, as Jesus promised to those who would believe and follow him. This really is euangelion: Good News! Now– in our brief, but busy space-time moment in history– Jesus already reigns from heaven to earth; a time between the Old and the eternally True. It’s time to believe anew and trust what our merciful LORD has been planning for us all along.

¹Wright, N.T. 2008. Surprised by Hope, Rethinking Heaven Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. New York: Harper-Collins, 151-152.