Hope: The Forgotten Virtue

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.”

So wrote Emily Dickinson from her hermit’s nest in Amherst.  We have lost hope, and we plod along in our daily routines, trying hard to survive the moment, hoping for some temporary respite from our hopelessness.  Hope?  What hope?  We labor until we die.  That is the nut of the matter. What good is retirement if we only wait for death?  The closer a man gets to his hole in the ground, the more he realizes that the days of his life are numbered.  Funerals are sobering events.  There, one day, lie you and I.  In every suicide, the root is hopelessness, and that for which the person was hoping was beyond his grasp forever.  There is no temporal thing in all the world that can provide either happiness or hope; for it all ends at a hole in the ground.  And then, the judgment.

My God!  How terrible is the fear of those who do not know of, or who have rejected the grace of God!  They may not reveal those terrors to anyone, especially not to themselves, but as the grave looms large, they fear that they will cease to exist.  They fear the state of death, its long silence; though together in a field of ten thousand other decaying corpses, they fear the fear that will consume them, facing it alone.  What an awful way to die.  Bitter to the end, even if outwardly unflappable.  Brave, but rebellious toward God.  That is not bravery; it is arrogance.

But for the saint, the living child of God Almighty, there is a hope that is certain.  We do not wonder what will happen in the moment of our death; we already know.  We do not see death as the unsaved see it.  Rather, we see it as a Door (cp. Jn 10:7; Rev 4:1), through which we will reenter the eternal estate,  loosed from the bonds of temporal things, the shackles of time removed; free to relish and rejoice in Whom we were, and are, before we stepped from eternity into time when we were born in the flesh.  Christians see death as a most refreshing liberation from the affairs of this life; not an end, or even an unconscious state.  Rather, our spirits simply depart these tabernacles of clay, and we are able at last to stand in the presence of our Lord Himself, to be reunited with our flesh and bone at the rapture of the Church.  It is better to be absent from the body and present with the Lord (2 Cor 5:8).

This is the certain hope of the saints of God.  It is the only hope that has any substance for the soul (Heb 11:1).  Everywhere in the New Testament, where the word hope is found, the context concerns the resurrection of the saints at the rapture, and the translation of the living saints from mortal to immortality.  There is no other hope in the Bible.   The certainty of our hope of the resurrection lies in the certainty of our Lord’s resurrection.  His resurrection is the substance of our hope, the evidence of our faith.

What do Christians hope for?  The same as unbelievers, sadly, for the most part.  Their hopes are in temporal things:

“I hope I get that job!”

“I hope she will accept when I ask her to marry me.  What if she doesn’t?” 

“I hope this is the winning lottery ticket.  Man!  What I wouldn’t do with all that money!”

“I hope we can go to Tahiti this year.” 

“I hope the doctors can keep me alive.”

“I hope, I hope, I hope!”  “I hope in everything temporal.”

When do we say, “I hope that God will make me fruitful today?”  How often do we contemplate the labors we perform on earth for the Lord in the light of the rewards we will be given when our reasonable services are fulfilled? 

Paul thought of it often, as evidenced by his many references to it in his letters to individuals and to the first century churches (cp. Phil 3:7-21; Gal 4:9-11).  He feared that he might lose a measure of his reward at the judgment seat of Christ if those to whom he had ministered did not continue in the faith and the hope and the love that are to characterize Church Age saints; if they did not serve God, being mindful also of their own eternal estates.  If they were fruitful, Paul’s treasure was enlarged.

If they became unfruitful, then all the reward for their service would amount to nothing, and Paul’s heavenly “account” (Phil 4:17) would be diminished by however much they ought to have laid up.  It is clear that Paul was always mindful of the treasure he was laying up in heaven, in stark contrast to the poverty and temporal persecutions that dogged his heels during most of his ministering life.  He rejoiced in his poverty, and was content in every circumstance, serving however he was led, no matter whether he was a prisoner in a dungeon or speaking before kings and lords.  He knew that whatever he lacked in his temporal life, he was laying up in great stores for his eternal estate.  That was the perspective by which he lived his life.  (cp. Phil 3:13-14).  It was the paradigm of his life, the principles upon which he stood.

Faith, Hope and Love, these three…

Faith is easy for children of God, for the regenerate.  It is simply trusting God from day to day, no matter the objective circumstances of our lives.  Rich or poor, great leaders or men of the alleyways and wharves, the saints look to God for provision and protection, grateful for His mercy and His love, depending upon His providence, attending to the only hope that we have this side of the grave, the rapture of the Church. 

We can engage one another in discussions of faith or love.  Love is the oil that lubricates everything Christian; that edifies, and does not tear down.  We all fail to love in the way that we ought to love, even one another.  We all love ourselves more, desiring the better cut of meat or the larger profit or higher praise from men.  These two virtues, faith and love, are open and free expressions of trust and adoration.  We love one another when the Holy Spirit gives us opportunity for fellowship, and we have a consciousness of it. 

Love is not something that we say or feel; it is a decision that we make many times a day.  It is entirely possible to love the convenience store clerk when you look her in the eye and tell her to have a blessed day, and then to walk out of the store and never see her again.  Love is something that we do.  It is a commitment of the heart and the will to do all that love demands for the object of our love.  It is not a decision to be taken lightly.  Our love for one another is a demonstration to all the world that our faith is in our God, of whom we are disciples (Jn 13:35).

Intercessory prayer is both a high privilege and a solemn responsibility.  It is the essence of love, bringing another person’s name or face before the throne of grace of the great Creator God.  If we do not have lengthy prayer lists, then there are few people whom we love, and where is our reward for that?  Failure to truly love results in all manner of evil intentions and desires.  The devil is in all of that.

Yes, it is easy to talk about faith or love, but when it comes to talking about hope, well, that changes the conversation from the ethereal, the eternal, to temporal matters.  In truth, there are many more regenerate Christians who have an unspoken fear of the rapture than there are those whose hope is heartfelt and steadfast in God’s grace and in the ministry of the word of reconciliation until that Day (2 Cor 5:18-21).  We have temporal hopes that  we speak about. We have temporal hopes also that we keep to ourselves. 

We seek that which we think will make us happy, but “buyers’ remorse” is almost immediate.  We rationalize our gorging in every way that we can gorge.  Sometimes, we are ourselves wolves in sheep’s clothing.  That old man in us is as depraved as any on earth, and we know it, but we try not to think about it. Yet, he is there, registering quietly in the backs of our minds (1 Jn 1:6-10).  He deceives us into all manner of unrighteousness when we walk in the flesh.  We make mistakes in time, and the repercussions that we heap down upon ourselves by our own folly are sometimes as heavy as the Lord will give us strength to bear. 

He has saved us from our sin, but not from our folly.  That, He does over the course of our entire lives, as we become less and less attached to anything worldly, and increasingly conscious that we have been set apart from the world, by God, to and for Himself.  If we pray for wisdom, God will give it to us liberally.  If we pray for hope, it stands before us like a beacon, illuminating and eliminating every fear and concern.

It is called sanctification.  We do not sanctify ourselves, but God uses the circumstances that we create in our lives, for good or ill, to teach us and to train us as children of God.  It is a process in which we interact with the world, but in our minds and in our hearts, we are separate from it. 

That new man comes more and more to the fore, and the Object of our hope becomes more dear.  Death bears no sting for the saints of God.  Death becomes a grand welcome to an eternal estate that our poor minds cannot conceive of today; but from which we came, and to which we shall return.  What can be seen of us is flesh, but we merely inhabit these cloaks of clay, and we look forward eagerly to the day when we shall put on the robes of righteousness and see with our eyes the majesty of our God and His heaven.  This, at the resurrection.

But wait!  Not only are the saints whose bodies have been sleeping raised bodily at the rapture, but there is one generation in all of time, from Adam till the last person is born during the Kingdom Age; one generation of saints that will escape even the experience of death, being translated from mortal to immortal “in a moment” (Gk. Atomos, “so small as to be indivisible – in this context, more quickly than an ‘atom’ of time).

And that is what many Christians fear; they fear that instant in which they turn from mortal into immortal.  They fear the recoil of being taken aback by finding themselves in a strange place, not knowing where to go or what to do.  It is not like that.  Not at all.  We have been in Christ since before the creation, existing personally and individually, but not bodily.  Chosen in Him, we lived in an eternal state in Him until time called our names and we were born.  If the rapture were a thing to be feared, it would not be called “our blessed hope,” but “our dreaded fear.”  We need not be afraid of that for which we are instructed to hope.

The diminishing of our hope is the very thing that the devil is most trying to accomplish in the saints these days.  He is attempting to divert us from our hope, even as the events that will mark his imprisonment in the abyss are already beginning to unfold upon the earth today.  The devil and his legions are fighting harder against us this day than in any times past, but it is not as overt today as feeding us to lions.  Rather, it is more subtle (Gen 3:1). 

The world has such a vast array of things for which to lust, of delicacies for the palate, of clothes and masks to hide behind.  The world is a wonderland of distractions – the Internet, smart phones, video games galore, satellite television, the highest of high technology and weaponry – and the devil uses them all more deftly than we can detect.  He doesn’t have to distract our bodies through their lusts; he can use our minds against us.  Every good thing on earth that our minds can conjure is not to be compared to the treasure that the saints will inherit through steadfast service to our Lord.

Now, as we see the clock about to strike midnight on Gentile world dominion, it is time for the bride of the Lamb to awaken and fill her lamps with oil (a symbol of the Holy Spirit), and to be watchful, for the times and the seasons of the rapture of the Church are upon us.  Let us not forget, in our morning prayers, to be watchful and hopeful, for the shout and the trumpet may sound even today.  It truly appears to be that near.  Hope has long been the forgotten virtue, but let us now realize, make real, our hope, before the Lord comes to resurrect the saints who sleep.  Let us not sleep!

Hope is in each of us, but as we turn our minds to earthly things, we immediately become discontent.  We want whatever it is that our hearts desire, and we forget about the treasure we ought to be mindful of in heaven.  Without a real hope that the Lord may come today, without the yearning for that to happen, life has no luster, no joy.  When we begin our day by praying, “Thy kingdom come,” we acknowledge that the tribulation must take place before God brings His visible Kingdom to the earth.  We know that the rapture happens before the days of darkness and despair that will afflict the earth during the last seven years of Gentile dominion over the earth. 

          As we see the very things that the prophets wrote about in ancient times unfolding all over the world in complete accordance with the Bible’s prophecies, our lives ought to be transformed by the hope that is in us. 

Perhaps the tribulation period will not begin for another ten thousand years.  That is certainly possible.  But the stark fact remains that every named nation is behaving toward Israel as they are said to be during the Day of the Lord.  We are told that a peace treaty will mark the beginning of the pouring out of the fury of God upon the earth (cp. Joel 3:1-2; Dan 9:27).  We see in the news daily, some new detail involving the process toward a comprehensive Middle East peace treaty.  We have a man on the throne in Washington who is the rave of the peoples of the world, and he has made it clear, even during his campaign, that he intends to resolve the thorny issues that divide the Arabs and the Israelis. 

Already, the Arab nations are joining our president in his pursuit of peace in the Middle East.  Not only the Arab world, but all of Europe and Asia and Africa – indeed, all the nations of the earth, under the auspices of the United Nations – are pressing harder and harder to make these negotiations succeed.  It is a climactic time in the history of the “times of the Gentiles” (Lk 21:24), and in the history of the world.  Yet, the whole world is unaware, except for a few disciples who have looked at the world through the eyes of the prophets, and have seen ourselves as that highly honored generation who will not see death, but who will be translated at the rapture.  If that is not your earnest hope every morning, how can you make it through the day in such a corrupt and depraved world as this one, who kills its own children?

The world is not getting better and better, though its “technology” has leapt forward dramatically in the past two hundred years or so.  All the while, the secret iniquities of mankind were and are being broadcast more and more openly by the prince of the power of the air.  Morally, the decline of the world is as dramatic as the explosion of its technology has been stupendous.  It cannot last much longer, lest it devolve into anarchy.  That day is fast approaching.  The faster it comes toward us, the more quickly comes the rapture.  There is the only hope of the saints, its eternal hope, its blessed hope.  Let the virtue of hope burn brightly in the breast of every saint, and may the light of His grace shine from our lips into the tortured hearts of the lost!  Let us be found doing the works that God has prepared for us; that we should be found walking in them when He comes for us.  Never has our reason to be hopeful been so keen or so plain.  Let us remember always our hope.