Copyright 2006 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

We are bombarded by bad news every time we turn on the TV or log on to the Internet in the 21^st Century. There is no escaping the torrential flood of negativity that permeates our media. Spend enough time watching CNN and I defy anyone not to at least flirt with despair. Every hour, all over the world, the Fall of man manifests itself and we now have the technology to see every atrocity in high-definition streaming video. One might be forgiven for struggling with a sense that all is lost and that the nature of the universe is misery.

But, as the Irish rock group U2 once sang, "Love will have its day".

If God is love there can be no doubt that this is true. We forget that God is, by definition, greater than the darkness of our present existence. We also forget that He has no intention of letting evil exist indefinitely. In the end He will win over evil and so will we who identify ourselves with His Son. For us there are no shadows in eternity, only the light of divine love.

Some say the church has neglected preaching about Heaven. There is so much focus on the here and now that we have lost sight of the There and Then. While it may be important to practically deal with the demands of Christian discipleship in the temporal world we cannot and must not lose sight of our final destination beyond this world. If we do we can only lose heart and be consumed by the darkness that seemingly encompasses us. Eschatological hope is not optional for the believer, it is essential.

The triumph of love is the destiny of the new Heaven and Earth. It cannot be otherwise because God has made His intentions clear. He will finally destroy evil utterly and when that evil is gone the space it took up will be filled with Him. Again, if God is love than love will reign just as He does.

At this point the biblical believer cannot help bringing up the subject of Hell. It is true that Hell will not be a place of love, though it will be a place of righteousness in the sense that righteous punishment will reign over both it and its inhabitants. But it must be remembered that Hell is not evil but rather it is a place where evil, and unfortunately those who embody it, are eternally destroyed. It is also utterly separate from the Kingdom of God. For the inhabitants of that Kingdom every trace of the malevolent will be forever gone. Love cannot co-exist with any hatred save the hatred of that which wickedly opposes the Author of love and since such wickedness will be purged both from us and our new home there will no longer be anything to hate.

So when we are tempted to think that the world of CNN and its ilk are all there is we desperately need to remember what the Scriptures tell us Heaven will be. We must meditate on the place the blood of Christ has opened up for us to enter at the appointed time, a place where love will have its day for all eternity.