Chapter 5

Part One:

I will have to separate chapter five into two parts. This section will deal with McKnight’s section of “What does Revelation tell us about Eternity?” McKnight begins saying that “Revelation, the most political book in the entire Bible, is the story of right finally being right and wrong finally being wrong.” In a world of moral relativism I sense a hope in McKnight’s tone that the world can and will be a better place. In this hope that I heartily agree with McKnight who says that we must understand the end of a story in order to understand its beginning. In reading books by an author who really writes well, a person finds clues in the beginning that tell us about the end. The end often explains much about the beginning of the story. It is not until we get to that end that we understand what the beginning was all about.

The ending first comes with a battle. At the end of the world we find this dualistic battle split between good and evil. McKnight here deals with good and evil to the point where I feel I most quote Kyle Potter in his thoughts on eternity. Kyle argues that denying “the goodness of creation…holds that the goodness of God is expressed in the Creation.” For Potter:

“Salvation is not about heaven as some kind of ‘final destination.’ Heaven is the place where the reign of God is complete, and in John’s apocalyptic vision at the end of the New Testament we see a city that exists in a renewed heaven and earth. Life is physical, life is real, and life is spiritual. Those ideas are not mutually exclusive, but are rather inseparable where God reigns.”

McKnight supplements and augments Potters argument saying that “the Ending flows from life now.” This ending will be comprised of a “complete society where the cycle of grace runs perfectly and where humans carry on their normal but enhanced gifts and abilities.” McKnight and Potter both argue for a type of “community of the risen.” Heaven is a place for the community of God to come together. Rob Bell, when talking about the direction of his church, argued that “the flames of heaven might be hotter than the flames of Hell.” In other words, if a person is embittered in this life, what’s to say they are going to be full of joy in the life to come? A community of God begins in the here and now.

Along with the end flowing from this life, McKnight argues for the centrality of Jesus at the end. If Jesus is central, as Revelation makes clear that he is, and if the life we are living now is flowing into eternity, it would be wise for us to begin the transformation process today. This world is not a place where we should be waiting for the next to come, we should be living in the here and now to help bring about change that will lead to our transformation and others into the way of Jesus.

The end, according to McKnight, will also be centrally focused on worship. McKnight notes that it means more than to “fold our hands, bow our heads, and endlessly sing uplifting hymns in an assembly of Christians plopped down on pews while heavenly harpists orchestrate yet one more rendition of ‘My Jesus I love Thee.’” Instead, “Worship, according to chapter twelve of Romans, is offering our bodies—that is, all we are—as a living and holy and acceptable sacrifice.” If this is true than “Worship, then, is a life lived as it is meant to be lived: for the good of others and the world.”