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Easter's 'Forever' Promise  

By Robert Knight

The word “forever” gets thrown around a lot.

It’s in countless love songs or even invoked when someone’s waiting more than a few minutes for an entrée to arrive. Impatient children often complain that something is “taking forever.” We all say it.

One place, however, where the term has profound, transcendent meaning is the Bible, where it’s mentioned 310 times.

Except for the Sadducees, the sad Jewish sect that refused to believe in an afterlife, Jews for thousands of years to this day have looked forward to not only the coming of their Messiah but the promise of eternal life.

That is, living forever with God.

For billions of people who believe that the Messiah came 2,000 years ago and lives today, Easter is a celebration of ultimate liberty. It means delivery from spiritual death and the promise of unearned life and love forever in heaven with the resurrected King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

David, the greatest king of Israel and the most prolific and gifted psalm writer, often spoke of the promise of eternal life for those who love God.

“You will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

You make known to me the path of life;

you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” (Psalm 16:11)

Likewise, the apostle Paul, who got a brief glimpse of heaven while still living on earth, wrote, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Cor. 2:9.

We simply cannot imagine what heaven will be like. Hollywood periodically takes a shot at it and fails miserably because it’s a guess from man’s limited imagination and only five senses.

People naturally see time in linear terms – in hours, days, months, and years. It’s what we can handle with our human brains and limited life spans.

The idea of forever is impossible to grasp. In fact, that prospect can be scary, especially to those who think we’ll be sitting around on clouds strumming harps in perpetuity. That sentence of eternal boredom has no biblical basis.

People who come back to this life after what they claim was a near-death experience often describe an overwhelming feeling of wellbeing and inexplicable love. Some recall meeting deceased family members and friends. Some say they encountered Jesus.

Cynics and nonbelievers dismiss such accounts, ascribing them to psychological issues, errant brain chemistry, or to drugs. But those skeptics also dismiss the possibility that the unfathomable complexity around us at both the microscopic and cosmic levels could have come from a Creator with powers beyond our understanding.

Psalm 19, David’s poetic case for intelligent design, opens this way:

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

In other words, we cannot plausibly attribute the timeless laws of nature and nature’s God to our own conjuring. We might be able to paint a sunset or take a photo, but the real deal is beyond comprehension.

That’s why deities of some kind are found everywhere around the world. The worship of false gods only points to the universal longing for meaning and purpose, a “God-sized vacuum” in our hearts, as Blaise Pascal put it.

C.S. Lewis, the Oxford don who wrote “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “Mere Christianity,” recalled that before he bent his knee to Christ, he found it increasingly difficult to push away the evidence all around him.

He was awestruck by nature and by the Christian spirit he saw in others, including “Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien.

After Lewis surrendered to the persistent Savior who loved him more than he knew, he was able to affirm truth wherever he found it, even in other religions up to where they diverge from the Gospel. Every culture, he pointed out, has marriage and some kind of moral code, such as the golden rule.

But they miss the most important part of the picture if they don’t have the Son of God, who uniquely declared that he is the “way, the truth and the life” and died to conquer death itself for all who believe.

When Christians observe Easter, they ponder the sacrifice that Jesus made for them on the cross three days before his resurrection and his promise of eternal life for those who repent of their sins and embrace the gift of salvation.

A friend of mine contrasts the promise of being in heaven forever to the temporary nature of an earthly vacation:

“You know what we typically do on our very first day on vacation? We think, ‘Darn, I have only six days left,’ or five days or whatever. Well, heaven has no such limit. And it’s all good.”

Forever. What a concept. Open to all who ask.

Have a happy and blessed Easter.

 
Illustration by Greg Groesch /The Washington Times