In this session we are talking about the time of Christ's return---what people call "the end times" or "the end of the world." What is this all about?

Many Christians have the idea that this will simply be the end of the world. Christ will return and judge the world, and Christians will go to heaven to be with him while unbelievers will go to hell. The problem with this vision is that it misses a crucial biblical teaching about Christ's return. It is not the end of the world but the culmination of the world. It is not abandoning the creation in favor of some ethereal heaven but a new creation.

In a nutshell, the story of the Bible is that God made the world and is its true and rightful king. Through the sinful rebellion of humans, the world became dominated by evil. But God did not let go. God determined to win back the creation and establish his rule (kingdom). Jesus Christ, the true King, came to reclaim this world. He did so by dying and rising again as victor over sin and death. He defeated the devil and is now the reigning King. The church proclaims his loving rule. One day the King will return and fully claim his creation, making all things new and good and right.

So the goal of salvation is not saving us from an evil world, but saving us and the evil world. The whole creation matters to God. Matter matters to God.

The apostle John shares the breathtaking vision of the new creation near the end of the book of Revelation. Notice some of the striking things this vision says about God's new creation.

• The new heavens and earth descend. Instead of things going up to heaven, the new creation comes down. Heaven is God's dwelling place, but when Christ returns heaven and earth will not be separate, for God intends to make his dwelling here with us.

• A city comes down. If God is restoring the creation, we might expect it to look like a pristine garden, a renewed garden of Eden. That the new creation comes as a city means that God honors human life as well as human accomplishments in his new creation, represented by a city. So the new creation is not completely new, but includes the old, perfectly renewed and refined.

• God's plan all the way through the Bible is to dwell with his people. In the new creation this will be finally and perfectly true.

• All the things that destroy and defeat us, all the suffering and sadness of this world will be gone---replaced by perfect joy and wholeness.

• Outside this new creation city is only death, called a "second death," for it confirms and continues the separation we experience in death. This second death is for those who refuse to repent of their sin and bow before the Savior.

In much the same way, the prophet Isaiah pictures the new creation as a renewed and redeemed earth. The focus is on the deep, overflowing joy of life in God's perfect new world.

This vision sustain us as we continue to live in a world that is groaning in the pain of childbirth (see Rom. 8:19). Knowing that God will renew all things gives us hope in the hard situations we face and motivates us to care for God's creation and to live lives that fit its contours. We live into the vision.