Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
Earlier today I was getting ready to come to Kansas for a conference called Prelude and part of this conference will be attending the "Everything Must Change" event with Brian McLaren. I stopped by the church building and ended up "borrowing" NT Wright's newest book from my Pastor (who ended up just giving me the book) Surprised by Hope is a great read. I have already read at least 100 pages, spent most of the time on the planes reading. I came across this long quote that really struck me about resurrection and hope that Christ followers have for today.
"Who, after all, was it who didn't want the dead to be raised? Not simply the intellectually timid or the rationalist. It was, and is, those in power, the social and intellectual tryants and bullies: the Caesars who would be threatened by a Lord of teh world who had defeated the tyrant's last weapon, eath itself; the Herods who would be horrified at the postmortem validation of the true King of the Jews. And this is the point where believing in the resurrection of Jesus suddenly ceases to be a matter of inquiring about an odd event in the first century and becomes a matter of rediscovering hope in the twenty-first century. Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word. The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world."
NT Wright lays out an amazing book all about the reality that heaven isn't the end for the believer. That it is about bodily resurrection at the end of time. That there is life after life after death. That there are two steps about the belief in the future. First death and whatever lies immediately beyond; second, a new bodily existence in a newly remade world.
A great read and a great book......
I will post more later about Prelude and the Everything must change conferences.
"Who, after all, was it who didn't want the dead to be raised? Not simply the intellectually timid or the rationalist. It was, and is, those in power, the social and intellectual tryants and bullies: the Caesars who would be threatened by a Lord of teh world who had defeated the tyrant's last weapon, eath itself; the Herods who would be horrified at the postmortem validation of the true King of the Jews. And this is the point where believing in the resurrection of Jesus suddenly ceases to be a matter of inquiring about an odd event in the first century and becomes a matter of rediscovering hope in the twenty-first century. Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word. The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world."
NT Wright lays out an amazing book all about the reality that heaven isn't the end for the believer. That it is about bodily resurrection at the end of time. That there is life after life after death. That there are two steps about the belief in the future. First death and whatever lies immediately beyond; second, a new bodily existence in a newly remade world.
A great read and a great book......
I will post more later about Prelude and the Everything must change conferences.
posted by Ryan at 11:32 PM
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