Message Sunday, Oct 25, 2020

Views from the Pews:

I share with you fom a  Book entitled “Educating and Equipping for Worship, for Service” – A Publication of the Education and Youth Department of the Diocese of Jamaica & the Cayman Islands

The Christian Hope

“The Christian Hope is to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God’s purpose for the world.”

As Christians we live in hope of eternal life made possible for us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  Eternal Life does not mean the mere extension of this earthly life.  It is really a transformation of our biological existence.  Eternal Life means life with God outside of time and space as we know it.  It means that our present relationship with God is not destroyed, but is changed and continued at a new and deeper level.

Eternal life is not just something we experience after death, but we can have an experience of the now.  We can have a foretaste of eternal life now.  Jesus makes this explicitly clear at the raising of Lazarus when He said these words:

“I am the Resurrection and the Life, he who believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die” (John 11:25-26).

We believe that there will be a Judgment day when we shall all stand before the presence of Jesus Christ.

The Creeds of the Church teach that Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.  Jesus will be the judge and he will dispense justice for the whole humanity without partiality or discrimination.

Jesus gives us the parable of the sheep and goats (see Matthew 25:31-46) to illustrate how he will judge this world.  At the judgment all people will be divided into two groups.  One group will inherit the Kingdom of God and the other will be set out from God’s presence.

The way we live our lives on this earth will determine the kind of judgment we will receive in the end.  If we have rejected God out of our lives, then we would have excluded ourselves from God’s presence, but if we have served God faithfully in this life, then we shall ultimately hear the voice of God saying: “Come O blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

Think on these things!