Rejoice in hope. Romans 12:12
Think about the recent history of the world. The nineteenth century ended with extraordinary optimism. Mankind was coming into a golden age. But just fourteen years into the twentieth century we had World War I. People said, “It will be the war to end all wars. If we can just get past this problem, then we will come into a new and marvelous world.”
It was only a matter of 20 years before World War II. After that we entered into the Cold War for about 50 years, but then the twentieth century ended with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. At the end of the Cold War, people began to speak about a New World Order. Well, twenty years haven’t even passed since the end of the Cold War, and we are already immersed in a whole new kind of war, the war on terror.
People say, “When are we going to see the kind of world we’ve always hoped for?” The answer is that you aren’t going to see it here in this life! All visions of Utopia are doomed to failure whether they be Marxist, Capitalist, or Islamic. Stop indulging false hopes!
Listen to what God says in the letter of James, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring” (4:13-14).
Even though things are uncertain in this world, how do you know your ultimate hope is sure?
