I heard it said recently, if the goal of Christianity is simply to get us to heaven, all we need are evangelists and assassins. Seriously, though, salvation cannot be reduced to a ticket to heaven. Salvation is about the restoration of full fellowship with the Trinity and to our original commission of exercising dominion over the earth. We have bodies as part of our humanity, because they are how we interact with the physical realm. Let’s face it, those in heaven now are in a disembodied state, and though in the heavenly bliss, they are incomplete until they receive glorified bodies at the final resurrection. Are they waiting to have bodies again in order to bring about the restoration of all things on earth which results in a new earth where the king will reign on earth forever and ever without rival? Our ignorance of the early Church Fathers’ emphasis on the prevailing concept of apokatastasis—the restoration of all things—combined with recently developed, popular, misleading end-times teaching and an inaccurate life focus, emerges. The idea of escaping the earth for heaven is counterproductive to a major part of our purpose. We are here to manifest the Father in this realm and establish His kingdom on earth. The Father seems more concerned with his will being done on earth through His mature children than He is with populating heaven. Are the members of the great cloud of witnesses wishing they had bodies, so they could re-join us in the mission? Luke begins the Book of Acts with a reference to his previous book—the Gospel of Luke—where he “wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven”. This implies Jesus is still “teaching and doing” in and through believers. We were commissioned with an earth task, with heavenly resources. Luke goes on to tell us that the heaven which received Jesus at His ascension would retain Him physically, “until the time of the restoration of all things,” which was predicted by the prophets So, why are so many people focused on a negative future—where things are getting so bad we want to escape—rather than on the final manifestation of ultimate victory already won by Christ on behalf of all mankind? The early believers had a hopeful eschatology and would be shocked by what is being taught as biblical truth in our day. There is meaning in every breath we breathe, every step we take, every word we speak, and every act of kindness we perform on earth. Nothing we do is disconnected from the one we are one spirit will.
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