The Christ in Prophecy Journal

Your Christian Hope: Or Lack Thereof

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What is Your Christian Hope?

In 1 Corinthians 13:13 the apostle Paul wrote that there are three cardinal Christian virtues “faith, hope and love.” As I was thinking about this statement one day, it suddenly occurred to me that I had heard hundreds of sermons on faith and love, but hardly any on hope.

What about you? Can you remember hearing a single sermon about hope? How would you articulate your hope? How would you define it? How would you put it into words?

Are you aware of the fact that both the quality and strength of your hope are directly related to what you know about Bible prophecy? And that, of course, is the reason most Christians have so little hope. Their preachers have ignored God’s Prophetic Word.

Lack of Hope

I was born into a Christian family, and I was raised in church. I’m thankful to say that my family was present every time the church’s doors were open Sunday morning and evening, Wednesday evening, Vacation Bible School, and Gospel meetings. Yet, after 30 years of faithful church attendance, I had little hope.

The preachers in the church I grew up in rarely ever spoke about Bible prophecy. During all those years of church attendance, I never once heard the word, “rapture.” Even worse, when prophecy was preached, we were taught Greek mythology rather than Hebrew theology.

The result was that after all those years of Bible teaching, if you had asked me to define my hope, I would have given you a pathetic answer like the following: “My hope is that if I die before the Lord returns, my soul will sleep, waiting for the resurrection. When Jesus returns, a big bang’ will occur, resulting in the annihilation of the created universe. At that point my sleeping soul will be awakened, and I will be resurrected to live eternally with the Lord as a disembodied spirit in an ethereal world called heaven. I will spend my time floating around on a cloud playing a harp.”

Needless to say, the only thing in that scenario that appealed to me was the promise of a resurrection. I couldn’t get excited about lying comatose in a grave for eons of time. The “big bang” concept scared me to death. I was appalled by the idea of continuing my existence as a disembodied spirit an ethereal blob with no individuality.

And I was both bored and amused by the thought of playing a harp eternally. The reason it amused me is because my boyhood church did not believe in instrumental music. Praising God with an instrument was considered a sin. Yet, I was going to spend eternity playing a harp! It made no sense to me, so I wrote it all off as bunch of nonsense. I tossed the whole scenario out the window, and with it went my hope.

In the next part of this series on your Christian hope, I’ll tell you how I finally discovered my hope.

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Dr. David Reagan

Dr. David Reagan is the Founder and Evangelist Emeritus of Lamb & Lion Ministries. He is a life-long Bible student, teacher, and preacher and he led over 45 pilgrimages to Israel. Dr. Reagan was the host of the radio then television program Christ in Prophecy for nearly 40 years.

1 CommentLeave a Comment

  • Our hope rests in the confidence provided by the Word of God, we have no need to fear yet trust, as we have seen the fulfillment of many things promised we will see all things fulfilled as declared by the Lord and his Holy Prophets.

    The expectation of these things can at times cause us anxiety, yet with all things we must learn patience for the Lord is not willing that any should perish! We as believers can rest in the promises of the Lord yet those who have rejected the free gift of salvation have no such hope!

    Bible Prophecy provides us with a message to those who would seek to deny the existence of the Lord God, a tool to aid in our ministry to the lost! Bible Prophecy not only provides us with a source of hope for the future as found in Christ, it also provides us with a map as our guide so that we might not be led by every wind of doctrine and stumble in the dark as those that have no light!

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