July 15, 2009

Heavenly Hope

The following article is the condensation of a devotional message delivered at the Spring Meeting of the General Conference Committee in Silver Spring, Maryland, April 6, 2009. We have retained several elements of oral delivery.—Editors.


2009 1520 page22 capn Monday, February 2, 2009, the Islamic Republic of Iran launched a domestically produced rocket—a very proud moment for the country. Its cargo was Iran’s first domestically produced satellite. In a televised speech to the nation, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said:

“Dear Iranian nation, your children have placed the first indigenous satellite into orbit. . . . With God’s help and the desire for justice and peace, the official presence of the Islamic Republic was registered in space.”
 
The 60-pound satellite, scheduled to return to earth after three months, was named “Omid,” which translates into English as “Hope.”
 
Just 13 days before the satellite was launched, on the other side of the world, in a country at the opposite end of the political spectrum, a new president was launched into office—Barack Obama. And Obama, as most of us are aware, authored a book called The Audacity of Hope.

America and Iran, in many respects, are as different and diverse as two countries can be. However, when we step back and look at the people of these two nations, we find that they share one remarkable similarity. Indeed, all people on this planet—not just Americans and Iranians—are looking for the same essential thing: HOPE!
 
2009 1520 page22What Hope Means
The word “hope” has a range of meanings. On the secular side of the spectrum it can refer to wishful positive thinking. But the biblical idea of hope goes deeper. It refers to confident optimism; expectant certainty. That’s because it’s sourced and secured in the perfect life of Jesus, His atoning sacrificial death on the cross, His resurrection, and His victorious ascension into heaven. But it goes even further, extending to what we call “the blessed hope,” the hope that Jesus will come again!
 
Lasting hope does not come from what we send into the heavens—whether they be rockets, satellites, or even our good works. We don’t receive biblical hope by simply being humanly optimistic (“the power of positive thinking,” so to speak). We don’t receive hope through wishful thinking. Real hope comes from heaven.
 
Hope Across the Centuries
Said Ellen G. White: “We have the greatest truth and hope that were ever given to our world” (The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, July 26, 1887). Those words are especially significant, because we’re living at a point in history when we can look back and see the way God has worked through the ages providing hope—in one seemingly hopeless situation after another.
 
The book of Genesis opens with a picture of a perfect environment. But by the third chapter Adam and Eve find themselves in need of hope. As they’d soon discover, however, the hope they needed would not come through fig leaves or through hiding, but through the solid promises of God. The serpent’s head would ultimately be crushed, they were told; Eve would give birth to children, albeit in pain; and Adam would eat as a result of perspiration. (But he would EAT, incidentally! . . . nor would it be the last meal of a condemned man awaiting execution.)
 
The hope they received is reflected in those remarkable words of Genesis 3:20: “Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.” Notice that this naming came after Eve sinned! Even after she sinned, she retained the status of mother of all humanity. In other words, Cheer up, Eve! Immediate death is off the table! You’re going to be the mother of all human life!
 
And in place of fig leaves, so futile as human clothing, God covered them with animal skins—with durable, warmth-producing leather. In a very real sense, they were clothed in hope. And God promised that One would come who’d destroy the evil serpent.
 
But these events were just the beginning of what would become heaven’s continuing effort to fill humanity with hope. In a few short generations the world would be described as filled with evil, corruption, and violence. But for 120 years, through Noah and his family, God kept hope alive, promising all who sought it an ark of hope. The thought of being locked up in the same environment with animals for more than a year couldn’t have been pleasant, but Noah and the others knew that that was better than being on the outside. In the ark there was hope.
 
Then emerging from the ark, they received God’s covenant of hope, symbolized in a rainbow, which to this day remains an enduring symbol of hope.
 
Everywhere one turns in the Bible, one finds evidences of hope.

• Abraham and Sarah—infertile, beyond childbearing years—become parents, not of just one baby, but of a nation. Hope!

• Joseph, betrayed by his siblings, dumped into a pit, sold into slavery, 
a stranger in a foreign land, becomes prime minister of the most powerful empire of the day. Hope!

• Born into a death penalty, hidden away in a basket on the Nile, found and adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses enters the royal palace and eventually is used by God to bring deliverance to an entire people. Hope!

• A dry path through the Red Sea. Hope!

• Food in the wilderness. Hope!

• Venomous snakes biting; a brass snake on a pole bringing healing. Hope!

• A Promised Land; a river in flood; dry ground for a nation to cross. Hope!

• A giant killing machine called Goliath, threatening God’s people; a skinny kid with a sling comes on the scene. Hope!

• An old man—a man of prayer—tossed to the lions; a worried, sleepless king finding him alive in the morning. Hope!
 
And we might go on, if space permitted.
 
The Ultimate Hope
I can remember visiting my elderly grandmother, a woman who personified hope and resilience. She was 106, and she had just had a minor stroke. The physiotherapist working with her said: “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kent, but when you walk you drag your left foot just a little.”
 
2009 1520 page22Grandmother replied: “Don’t worry, it will come good!”
 
Just think of it: she was 106; she’d had a stroke; and she was expecting to make a full recovery! Talk about hope!
 
This little old lady had been a pastor’s wife. She’d lived her life devoted to everything that was good and wholesome. She’d feasted on everything that was positive. But two years later as she came to the ripe age of 108, age finally had begun to take its toll. I was able to visit her just a few days before she died, and, understandably, she was getting a little vague. Not recognizing me, she asked, “Are you my husband?” (Her husband had died 27 years previously, though at comparable ages my grandfather and I shared a close resemblance.)
 
As grandmother and grandson sat there in silence, I couldn’t comprehend that Grandma was actually dying. Grandma was born and raised in Australia, which has eight of the world’s 10 most deadly snakes, and which is surrounded by oceans infested with great white sharks and deadly box jellyfish. Grandmother was raised in far-north Queensland on a street called “Alligator Creek Road.” Are you getting the picture? She’d fought off cancer in her 50s! And we came to think that nothing could kill Grandma Kent! Nothing had for 108 years!
 
Finally, a question fell out of my mouth: “Grandma, can you tell me about Jesus?”
 
Instantly, a smile came to her face, and she beamed: “Oh yes, Love!” she said. (And when she called me “Love,” I knew I was her grandson again!) She told me all about Jesus. And it wasn’t the ranting of a fragmented mind, but rather a well-considered, articulate account of Jesus, anchored in a lifetime of experience. Jesus, her blessed hope!
 
She could forget her grandson and even her only husband to whom she had been married for more than 60 years, but her hope in Jesus was never in doubt. She’d found that hope as a teenager, and it had become her 
lifetime companion.
 
Let’s Keep the Hope
Do you remember when you found hope? Or, perhaps, when hope found you?
 
I’ll never forget the day when I discovered hope. In childhood I was afraid of the Second Coming. I was convinced that the only way I was going to receive eternal life was if Jesus returned at 10 past 9:00 at night. You see, 9:00 p.m. was my bedtime. I would clean my teeth, then kneel down beside my bed and say my prayers, asking the Lord to forgive my sins. And I believed that if Jesus returned at that moment, before I had the opportunity of sinning again, I would be saved. I thought that that was the only way I could be saved.
 
But then I discovered the gospel. That Jesus died for every sin, that He took my guilt, that He died for me. I discovered that Jesus was looking to save people!
 
Then one day—it was just an ordinary day—I found myself able, at last, to lift up my eyes and not be afraid of the Second Coming! Clouds were forming in a certain way, and I hoped that Jesus would come through those clouds—even though it wasn’t 10 past 9:00 at night. I found that I could lift up my head in the certain assurance of redemption and positively hope that Jesus would come, instead of being afraid of His appearing.
 
God calls us to be faithful. He calls upon His people to live their lives in the reality, the certainty, and the expectancy of heavenly hope, a hope that will culminate in the splendor of Jesus’ coming. Just as we expected the sun to rise this morning, just so we can expect Heaven to deliver upon the promise of hope. “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thess. 4:16, 17). 
  
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Anthony Kent is an associate secretary in the ministerial association of the General Conference in Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S.A.

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