Hope 38h60

Sándor Németh

Hope

Hope © Sándor Németh 2003 All rights reserved

The author thanks

Judit Németh S. Csaba Surjányi Júlia Petrőcz Csaba Dévényi Olga Márkus Krisztina Somorjai Shelly Matos

...we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

/Romans 5:3-5 /

The translation was based on the New International Version

Preface

One of the very important messages of the Bible is hope. Actually, this spiritual reality that keeps people’s lives on the right path is found in the pages of the Bible more often than we think. This spiritual reality is what leads us to a positive inner strength and a proper faith-filled attitude toward our circumstances. We can honestly say that the Bible is truly the Book of Hope. From the first chapter to the pictures of the last monumental scenes, everything and really everything suggests to people who are wandering on this Earth looking for their path or maybe occasionally losing purpose: “Trust and hope! I am here to help you, to deliver you, to give your life a meaningful purpose and a desirable destiny.” Interestingly enough, sometimes even Christians forget what a vitally important sustaining power hope has, even if we are saved and are certain that our final destination is in heaven at the throne of God. There are many church-going Christians who, despite their assurance of salvation, have surprisingly either not learned to live out their faith by continuously trusting God, or somewhere on the way, maybe during the trials and tribulations, they have forgotten about the fact that they are called to a living hope. Based on experience, it is useful and necessary to study the Word of God about this topic so we can gain or renew the heavenly vision about hope which is an extremely important, essential driving force in our earthly lives.

Chapter one

In the Storm

The topic of hope is best illustrated by Paul’s shipwreck.

When a gentle south wind began to blow, they saw their opportunity; so they weighed anchor and sailed along the shore of Crete. Before very long, a wind of hurricane force, called the Northeaster, swept down from the island. The ship was caught by the storm and could not head into the wind; so we gave way to it and were driven along. As we ed to the lee of a small island called Cauda, we were hardly able to make the lifeboat secure, so the men hoisted it aboard. Then they ed ropes under the ship itself to hold it together. Because they were afraid they would run aground on the sandbars of Syrtis, they lowered the sea anchor and let the ship be driven along. We took such a violent battering from the storm that the next day they began to throw the cargo overboard. On the third day, they threw the ship’s tackle overboard with their own hands. When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved. After they had gone a long time without food, Paul stood up before them and said: “Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete; then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. Last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’ So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. /Acts 27:13-25 /

Before we start talking about hope itself, I’d like to point out that natural elements in the Bible usually have their symbolic meanings as well.

Some Biblical Symbols

Let’s take the ship first. The ship often has a symbolic meaning. It’s enough to refer to the fact that on the walls of catacombs, ships often symbolized the life path of the believer and his dependence on God. That’s why the life of the people buried there were depicted by ships as they were moving forward toward the harbor of eternity. As they finally reached their destiny, the journey was successful. Although, if we think of James, the ship doesn’t just symbolize the life of a believer but the life and destiny of all people. /James Chapter 3/. The wind also has several meanings in the Bible: it often symbolizes the supernatural world. For example, in the Gospel of John, Jesus says “the wind blows wherever it wants to”. /John 3:8/. Then it makes it clear that he speaks about the Holy Spirit. In Hebrew the word ’ruach’ means wind, spirit, and breath as well. The southern wind usually means a good spirit, a positive, invisible spiritual force which helps and s people. This is nothing else but grace, the destiny-altering power that conveys the presence of God and leads people’s lives in the right direction. The northern, north-eastern wind which is just the opposite means destruction, devastation and judgment. It symbolizes a spiritual realm opposing the Kingdom of God. This story has another important element as well: the sea. In the Book of Revelation, the Apostle John points out that the sea symbolizes peoples, nations, multitudes and masses. Even the prophets often connect mankind with the sea. Accordingly, the roaring sea symbolizes the circumstances when the northern wind, which is the powers of evil, influences people and through them bad and evil come up to the surface.

In the Book of Isaiah the roaring sea is the symbol of unbelief and rebellion against God. It’s important to consider the above mentioned facts because they can help us understand why the series of events that led to shipwreck were recorded in the Bible. We know that nothing, not even a single letter is redundant. Everything has a purpose. Everything has a meaning, as the Apostle Paul emphasizes: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” /2 Timothy 3:16/. The Holy Scripture prepares people to become suitable for God and to become

able and qualified to serve Him. If this story wasn’t more than just an episode of Paul’s life, I’m sure the Holy Spirit wouldn’t have allowed Luke to include it in the Book of Acts. Most stories like this must be analyzed from a different perspective as well to see what symbolic meanings these natural elements have. Then we can understand that this story, which really happened to Paul, was emphasized by God because He has a message in it for people of all times.

Horizontal Hope

The main message of the above-mentioned events is none other than hope, which the Holy Spirit wants to illustrate through a real story. If we look closely, we can find both kinds of hope in this story, as we can typically speak about two kinds of hope. The first kind of hope is represented by the sailors and the Roman soldiers. The essence of this hope is that the expectation focuses on the future. People expect their dreams and goals to be fulfilled in the future. This expectation is expressed the best in verse 13: ”… they saw their opportunity…” This is the most apt definition of the first kind of hope. It shows that the foundation of this is human power, intention and humanity. These people thought that they would set a positive goal and then they could achieve it. Drug use, alcoholism and similar deviances are so wide-spread in society because they somehow indicate the loss of hope. People lose hope if they see that they can’t do a meaningful and constructive job, if they don’t have the expected results, and if they are not satisfied with what they experience in their families and communities. However, if people don’t have hope in life, they turn against themselves and destroy themselves. From this perspective I believe the 20th century has shown many more scary examples to people than any of the previous centuries. The natural or horizontal hope is characterized by the fact that human ability and power want to achieve positive goals. People are convinced that they can have

their lives, destinies and closer communities under control. The people in the example also thought that as the south wind began to blow the circumstances were favorable and would remain that way, or at least continue within their cont-rol. In their hope there apparently wasn’t anything supernatural or transcendental. In this story it’s obvious that no matter how much this kind of hope frees creativity and different abilities in people, sooner or later everybody will encounter situations that this kind of reality-focused hope ignores.

What was it that the Roman soldiers and the sailors ignored? The only thing they forgot about was the reality of the northern wind and the power of the stormy sea. First of all, they ignored the fact that there is a power in the invisible world which supersedes people’s abilities and intentions. This power which the Bible calls the Kingdom of Satan, has a greater influence and is not a friend of humanity but its enemy. The other thing that they ignored is that there are times when the north wind – the invisible spiritual power of the Kingdom of Satan – strikes down on our circumstances unexpectedly bringing shocking resistance, conflicts or struggles. People in general are not prepared for these conflicts; they don’t have any guidance in how to deal with them. Even if they are prepared for such situations, the powers generating the conflicts far exceed human intelligence, ability and knowledge. These sailors were convinced that they were in control of their intentions, because they trusted their abilities, strength and equipment, but after sailing for a short time they found out that their view of reality was not realistic, as the power of the sea and the pounding wind far exceeded the possibilities in human hope. Today it’s considered exceptional if people have any kind of hope. The Bible talks about all forms of hope so many in a very positive way. Our generation lives in a time of hopelessness; there are hopeless people on the Earth living without personal goals that would motivate them to get ahead, to break out and to be successful. There might be many reasons for this, but in these times it is important to encourage people to have goals and to focus their strength, to work and to train themselves to fulfill their goals.

Chapter two

The Story of Job

According to the Bible, even though this type of hope gives us a great first impression, it will sooner or later disappoint people, as it can’t sustain them. That’s why Job, one of the best-known heroes of the Old Testament, states what most of us feel today: “Yet when I hoped for good, evil came.” /Job 30:26/ Job – who is described in the Bible as blameless and upright; who feared God and shunned evil – was a very successful, healthy, rich man at the beginning of his life, and even his children were blessed by God. Then suddenly everything changed, the north wind broke into Job’s life and family. His children became victims of disasters, he lost everything he had, and later he became seriously ill. That’s how he came to the conclusion: “Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness.” The conclusion for people who hope is that it’s not enough to hope horizontally looking into the future, expecting our goals and dream to be fulfilled. Job was a man like that: based on his previous experience he expected things to be better in the future. Then in the midst of disaster he had to it: “Yet when I hoped for good, evil came.”

Hope That Can Vanish Easily

Hope is nothing less than expectation: positive expectation full of trust. Someone trusts that his goals and dreams will be fulfilled. Accordingly, Job expected good, but evil came. I believe Job is not alone in this. We experience this often, and people often encounter events that don’t meet their expectations. This is especially typical of young people; they expect something good, but as time goes by somehow more bad things happen to them than good, and then suddenly they notice that their ships have become uncontrollable; adrift on the stormy sea they are faced by a series of hindrances, disappointments and frustrations and resistance. At the same time they feel that some kind of a dark force wants to pull them down to the bottom of the sea. Their lives lose meaning and value as hope is lost as well.

They had a hope that was easily lost as it was subjective and deceptive; not able to stand against the trials. If you are only at the level of hope where you expect your future to fulfill your goals and dreams, you can’t be sure that you will be successful or happy. It’s not certain that your life will go well in the future or that you can have tomorrow and your circumstances under control. It’s not certain that you can take authority over or control powers that would cause you to be oppressed, excluded, useless, and incapable. It’s not certain that you can have victory in a battle against forces that would destroy your abilities and stand in your way. When things were going well, Job was pretty sure that his whole life would be successful, on the upward swing. When someone is successful and things are going well, he doesn’t have a sense of danger, he doesn’t think of failure or getting into a valley or storm. During these times he thinks he’s untouchable and invulnerable. He thinks he’s capable of everything; he can solve every problem; he can answer every question; his life can’t take a negative direction. In our original example, both the sailors and the Roman soldiers were people like this. However, very soon they found themselves on the stormy sea, the north wind struck and the south wind disappeared. Then they had to realize that things were not going the way they thought they would; they were not in control; they were not directing their ways, but there was an unknown power, the north wind that they couldn’t control, as it was stronger than them.

Drifting in the Storm

This is when people start drifting from their life goals. In a voyage, it’s very important to never take your eyes off of your final destination; the harbor you are headed toward; your final goal, even if your life is in a storm and you are surrounded by conflicts. If these are not clear in you, you can easily drift from them in the midst of storms and get on the path of despair and failure. Very many people start their lives with great joy and full of hope, but then conflicts cause them to swerve from their course; from where they have started

from and the path they have committed their lives to. They start drifting, and their drifting can end in two ways: they either hit the rocks – as one option – or recognizing the danger, they get rid of their burden and try to find a solid foundation for their hope. I recommend the latter for everyone in crisis. The purpose of the storm is not necessarily to ruin you or to destroy you, but to make you examine the foundation of your hope. Is the foundation of your hope solid, long-lasting and storm-resistant? Or can the storm and the north wind destroy the foundation of your hope? It’s really important to know what you base your hope on. Can the north wind corrode it? Can the stormy sea destroy it? Or is it a kind of ’ship’, a foundation that has been tried by the north wind yet it survived the frothing waves and made it safely to the harbor? This is the great question that you need to find an answer to. Job understood this. He realized that something was missing in his life. Job got into a hopeless, drifting state, when all of his natural perspectives disappeared and even his wife sent him a message: “Curse God and die!” /Job 2:9/ It was hopelessness itself; the fulfillment of problems; the philosophy of devastation. The woman completely lost her human poise and attitude in the midst of tragedy, and she suggested that her husband do something completely destructive as well. She thought everything was meaningless. The good life they had, their blessings, had all ed away; everything was a lie and there was nothing left but destruction. Her recommendation would have pushed both of them into the valley of destruction. Job, however, was a different man. He started to look for the way out of the crisis! He wanted to grab hold of the opportunity to get back on his feet even during crisis. : if you are in crisis; if trouble and harm come your way; the first thing that is absolutely necessary for survival is to examine the foundation of your hope. Despair and every hopeless situation where it seems that there is no way out has one source, and that is the loss of the foundation of hope, to the point that it doesn’t exist anymore. I can’t trust in the future. I can’t hope. I can’t expect anything good anymore, only bad. Job’s wife got to this point, so she conveyed a message of pessimism to her husband: You will never get back on your feet again; you will never be a healthy, successful man again; you will not have children; everything is lost and this situation will never change; it will remain

like this forever. It was not only the woman who spoke to Job like this, but physical reality seemed to confirm it. His situation seemed to be final, but he was not a man who gave up. Instead he kept looking for something he could hold onto, a foundation he could put his feet on, where he could stand and start over again.

Job Starts All Over

Let’s examine what the foundation of Job’s resumption was. It was hope in a new light!

At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. /Job 14:7/

I don’t know how many of you have had a similar spiritual or emotional crisis in your life, a situation when your hope leaves you, and if you try to think ahead of the future your soul will be filled with evil forebodings. We feel that things are harder and harder, and everything seems so meaningless. This might not be an unknown thing for many of you… Job obviously felt the same, and even his wife fed this feeling. Then suddenly Job looked out of the window and started watching nature. He observed the trees for a long time and noticed that the branches of the tree break off, but then they sprout again. A tree comes down, but then after one or two years a shoot grows from its roots. He realized that the tree had hope. If the tree had hope, why should people not have it?! Job realized that human hope is corroded by time, even if we didn’t mess up,

time would implacably dissolve it. Let’s look at verse 19 where we can find the following statement about natural hope: “…as water wears away stones and torrents wash away the soil, so you destroy a person’s hope”. Job understood that as the water wears away the stones (probably we have seen it many times on the beach that the waves just keep washing the rocks, and the rocks lose a little bit of themselves every time the waves hit them, which means they wear down). In the same way, hope wears down during human trials. Here we are still talking about natural hope. Then we will get to the other type of hope because it’s vital to see the importance of switching into second gear. If we kept our hope in first gear the whole time, sooner or later we would get to a place of despair where we would feel we can’t go on, and everything is lost. However, God wants us to continue our journey, even if we feel this way because when someone says he can’t take it anymore, that’s when God’s grace and supernatural help show up. The Apostle Paul realized that “when I am weak”, the power of God is manifested. /2 Corinthians 12:10/ When human intention, skill, expertise, the ability of man-made equipment fail, and we feel that we can’t go on, that we have to give up, that is the moment when the omnipotence of God can manifest itself in someone’s life. As far as natural hope is concerned, Job realized that it would fade sooner or later. Human hope is worn away by time just as water wears away the rocks. Floods, storms, hardships, troubles and unsolved problems of life sweep people away from hope. If you could find a way out of every situation, or if you could solve all of your problems, you would be God. Most people, of course, don’t seriously believe that they are God, yet sometimes they behave as if they know the answer to everything. In reality it’s not so. No matter how people strive for perfect solutions, the greatest tragedy of the 20th century is that such closed philosophical systems were created through which people were made to believe that that they could always have their circumstances under control. The most significant disproof of this was the series of events of the 20th century. History may have never seen such a raging sea as in the 20th century. As it turned out, no matter how rational people were, how advanced their technology

was or how great their achievements in various fields of science, they couldn’t control their own circumstances – least of all in their personal lives. Circumstances were favorable only as long as the wind of the sea blew their way. But as soon as an unfavorable wind strikes, the law of human will can’t work, and the processes that start then have an unforeseeable end. The experiences of the beginning of the 21st century just confirm this even more. In the world the future is usually planned artificially. Politicians and philosophers regularly examine in advance, analyze and forecast the future. However, the lesson history teaches us is that events never meet people’s expectations. Even the most outstanding ’planners’ plans failed, and they pulled millions into the pit of their failure. Why would current and future ’future planners’ think that life will meet their expectations? Things will not happen the way they expect it. They feel that they have the boat under control only as long as the south wind blows, but as soon as the north wind rises, the situation will become unpredictable. Job calls our attention to the fact that even if we have the smartest, wisest, most professional goals for our hope, and even if we have the ability and other natural skills that we need to reach these goals, this hope will wear off and weaken over time and we won’t have things under control for long. There isn’t (and there has never been) a society where the basic needs of everyone are fulfilled. This will be only in the Kingdom of God when God will live in everyone, when everyone will be full of the presence, the glory and the power of God. Until then what remains for us is hope. Hope is the positive answer to our basic needs, a kind of trust that if I lack something today, I won’t tomorrow. It will be given to me because of my work, my endeavor and my intention. If we have a positive power, a constructive influence in our lives that sets our ship in the right course. What we need to know is where we can get this positive power.

Active and ive Hope

Hope is active when we expect our lives to turn out to be good and to be happy as a result of our own actions.

ive hope is when someone expects his life to be happy and productive as a benefit of other people’s actions. Many of us have both active and ive hope, because no one can make himself happy alone. Obviously, other people’s positive actions can influence our happiness even if we do everything to achieve this only through our own work. Job states that this kind of hope will surely fade. If not sooner, than when someone dies. That’s why Solomon says that when godless people die, their hope will completely disappear. /Proverbs 11:7/ The expression ’godless’ is not used by accident as the cent-ral source of the second type of hope is the Lord Himself.

Do you still what Job observed? If the branches of the tree are cut off, they will sprout again. A tree comes down but then after one or two years a sprout grows from its roots. Then he asks the big question: If someone dies, is he going to get back on his feet again? Will the one who is fallen or cut off sprout again? Will he stand up like a tree again? Do humans have at least as much hope as trees?

If someone dies, will they live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait for my renewal to come. /Job 14:14/

This is the big question: if someone dies, which is the inevitable final end, there’s no hope. But if there is resurrection, there is hope! Job says: I’ve been brought low. I’ve lost everything. I’ve been robbed. I live in the shadow of death and every minute of my life is suffering, pain and misery. My friends hate me, everybody has left me, and even those who visit me just torture me with all kinds of moral teachings. I can’t take it anymore! Where can I find an answer? Is there a foundation for my hope that I can place the meaning

of my life on? So Job started with the idea that trees have hope, and then he came to a conclusion that if trees have hope, he must have hope as well! Hope for people has only one solid foundation and that is the resurrection. If there is resurrection, it’s worth fighting even on my sickbed – Job concludes. If there is hope, there’s a point in rejecting illness, and fighting against rejection, poverty and misery. I fight out of hope – he says. If I have hope, I fight against evil. If I don’t have hope, I surrender to evil, because there’s simply no point in fighting against it. So the big question is whether there is resurrection. If there is, our hope has a foundation. If there isn’t resurrection, hope for people has no foundation. Job’s sufferings led him to an important question to which those in generations to follow have also sought the answer to. We know from his story that he got the answer to his question… But let’s get back to our original story.

Chapter three

The Hope of the Apostle Paul

Besides the Roman soldiers and sailors, the Apostle Paul was also traveling on the ship in the storm. He represented the second type of hope. When all the other travelers had lost their hope; when the flood, the storm and the waves made them desperate and everyone was shouting: “We can’t survive this; we will die; our lives have lost their meaning; everything we’ve worked for is gone”, Paul suddenly turned to them: “People have good hope!” What did the Apostle Paul mean by good hope? Let’s see the Apostle Paul’s vision of hope in Romans.

World Sustaining Hope

That the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. /Romans 8,21-26/

Paul basically says the same that Job realized when he said that trees had hope. The apostle, however, claims even more, and that is that the main sustaining power of the world is hope. He doesn’t talk about ing hope, but about another kind of hope that sustains the created world. The apostle of the nations calls attention to the fact that the whole created world is in bondage to decay. However, the trees, waters, the sea all hope, and so do flowers. What are they expecting? “Freedom”, says the Apostle Paul. They are

expecting freedom. This hope sustains the world. With this statement he says nothing less than that this second type of hope is a world-sustaining hope. That’s why he emphasizes that if this hope can sustain the whole world, it can sustain your lives as well. This hope sustains the Earth and the trees as the whole creation is groaning, as the Apostle Paul says. We can notice or even hear this especially in the fall and winter, because nature has a sound that has also been expressed by various artists who can perform this with the appropriate musical language and other artistic means. All of nature is hoping: it patiently suffers through what is happening right now. The trees and nature convey a very sad message in the fall: leaves are falling, green leaves become dead fallen leaves, everything is foggy, it seems nature is filled with sadness and sorrow. Sadness and sorrow settle not only into people’s souls, but nature also conveys the message of sorrow and the pain of dying. Fall and winter therefore are the seasons of hope. Nature loses its beauty, but it looks forward to regaining it one day. It expects to be renewed. But it looks forward not only to spring and summer, but also to being able to be delivered out of bondage, and to being completely free. The greatest desire of trees and flowers is to become free. The Earth wants to be free, the sea and forests want to be free, but unfortunately they can’t, says the Apostle Paul, as they are in bondage to decay. But one day the glory of God will come to this Earth and put an end to this bondage so nature can get a taste of the long-awaited freedom. /Romans 8: 19-22, 21-26/ This shows that nature has a higher hope than fleshly people. If this second type of hope works in nature like this, it’s worth paying attention to it, and putting our hope on a solid foundation.

The Foundation of Hope

Now we are going to examine what the Apostle Paul considers the solid

foundation of hope. This foundation of hope is not in the visible world. Paul speaks about a kind of hope of which the foundation and power is not of human intention but invisible reality. According to Job, if you yourself, your knowledge, or your abilities are the foundation of your hope, it will fade sooner or later. If you get into hardships, problems or you are surrounded by a plethora of unsolved tasks, you will start to decline until you find the solid foundation of your hope. The solid foundation of your hope is not here on Earth, not in the present, not in the visible world, but in the invisible, says the Apostle Paul. If this invisible thing is the foundation of our hope, this hope will sustain us under all circumstances. Let’s see what the Apostle Paul elsewhere calls the invisible foundation of hope. We can find one of the most beautiful definitions of hope in the book of Hebrews.

God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. /Hebrews 6:18-20/

The Apostle Paul, therefore, calls our attention to the fact that we must flee from hopelessness to hope, because hope is a firm and secure anchor for our souls. This anchor is fixed behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies. We know that anchors are usually put down in the harbor, so the Apostle Paul says that we can obtain a kind of hope, the anchor of which is already in the harbor, which means it has already survived the north wind, gone through the stormy sea and come into eternity, into the glory of God! That’s where the anchor of human life is fastened, which means human life can end up in eternity. And this is possible because Jesus Christ crossed through the stormy sea and conquered the north wind.

Jesus Conquered the Storm

It’s not by accident that the gospels record the story of Jesus as he went through the stormy sea and calmed it down. This means he can lead you through your life as he has already gone through everything you go through. He encountered a northern wind much stronger than ours; the stormy sea hit him much harder than it hit anyone else. The whole world turned against him, even his disciples forsook him. Nevertheless, he went through storms and hell, and then came back to life. After his resurrection he went through the skies among the planets and galaxies, and went to the highest world to take a seat in the glory of God. He fastened his anchor there and designated that place as the final destination of human life! He’s the one who walked the path, was in the sea, conquered the north wind and the stormy sea and set the destination of human life which is none other than the glory of God. He gave an anchor to men which is a link to the harbor even during the journey, so they could see the end of the storm; the lights of the harbor, even when the north wind strikes or the journey takes them through the stormy sea. As the Apostle Paul says, this hope is like a firm and secure anchor of our ship even on the frothing sea. It means that you won’t miss the mark, your life will not run aground and all your goals will be completely fulfilled. This hope that the Apostle Paul speaks about is the second type of hope, the supernatural hope. He says that this kind of hope will not shame us but it will sustain us. As the Apostle Paul had this kind of hope, the sailors and Roman soldiers traveling with him were also saved, the same way many people in the world will be saved because of this hope. Another important thing that is mentioned in Romans 8 is that Jesus Christ of Nazareth has another surety besides entering the glory of God, and that is the Holy Spirit. As we mentioned before the foundation of the first kind of hope is human intention, but the surety of the second, supernatural or vertical kind of hope is a

power that exceeds human power, therefore it’s greater than the north wind and the stormy sea. He is able to realize human goals that are in accordance with God’s will. That’s why God wants you to be born again into this living hope! Living hope is the second type of hope, and it’s God’s will for you to grab hold of it. The Apostle Peter says about the new birth that God gave new birth ’into living hope’ /1 Peter 1:3/ to those who believe in Jesus Christ. So one of the purposes of being born again is to get into this living hope that can give our lives an eternal, storm-resistant foundation that can lead us to the harbor, which is eternity, the glory of God.

Chapter four

Christian Hope

As far as hope and faith are concerned, we must know that God wants to bless our whole person. Faith is located in the human heart, and hope was given as a blessing to the human mind which can stabilize the human soul. In previous chapters, we mentioned that there are two types of hope: One is horizontal hope, from which people can expect their hopes and dreams to be fulfilled. This horizontal or natural hope is the foundation of every meaningful human deed. As the Apostle Paul says: “Whoever plows and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest”. /1 Corinthians 9:10/ With this agricultural work, he illustrates natural hope which includes work, the actual activity and the expectations that come afterwards, because human goals are not fulfilled immediately after the work is completed but after some time of waiting. Hope is a confident expectation that our work will be beneficial; it will bring some kind of result. As the result can’t always be seen upon the completion of work, the work itself and the waiting period are two important manifestations or typical characteristics of hope. Thirdly, we can add what we find in Romans 8: we hope in what we can’t see. Based on this, the third very important attitude is long-suffering. Long-suffering assumes that there is a counter-power against our goals that wants to hinder the fulfillment of our goals. But we can believe that our work has power in it, or even better, our work is ed by someone who makes it impossible for our goals to fail. So a man like this, who is persistent in seeing his goals fulfilled, patiently endures the pressures that come against his goals, be it an attack against his person or an attack against his actions. When counter-powers attack human goals in warfare, hindrances and conflicts, very often there’s a moment when people give up their hopes, and drift away from the goals about which they had positive expectations before the conflicts. They believed that those goals would be fulfilled. It’s previously been mentioned that natural hope has a big problem. It’s subject

to the power of death, so death can corrode the foundation of human hope, and when someone dies, his natural hope will die too, because death puts an end to someone’s life. Of course, not in every case, but I will talk about that later. When death deprives people of their lives, the only thing that remains for them after death is existence itself. And this existence has no more expectation in it. One of the main characteristics of hope, contrary to pessimism, is that it doesn’t expect bad, but only positive things. On the contrary, pessimism is the expectation of bad things, a negative expectation usually accompanied by fear, and despair as opposed to hope which is accompanied by long-suffering, peace and faith. Abraham, the father of faith, believed in full hope that the promises God made would be fulfilled. In the cases of Biblical heroes, it was always God who set goals for people, and this is the surest foundation of hope. When someone sets goals based on the promises of God, he believes full of hope that “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind.” /Numbers 23:19/ He is always able to fulfill his promises in any circumstances. Unfortunately, to the contrary, people are not able to fulfill their promises because maybe the circumstances have changed, and it put the promise-maker in a situation where he has no chance to fulfill his promise. The Bible clearly states, however, that God is Almighty, and He has the power to fulfill all his promises. So the surety of Christian life is God Himself.

Life After Death

Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. /1 Thessalonians 4:13-14/

In these two verses, it’s obvious at first glance that not every person has the hope of a Christian. The Apostle Paul considers ignorance the main reason for grieving those who have died. It means that people don’t know that there is life after death. People can’t experience life after death empirically; it’s not part of their everyday experience, they don’t have direct information about the most important question for them. However, this truly is the most important question for people: is there life after death or not? Because if there isn’t life after death, when someone, our relative or a friend dies, we have every reason to grieve, and to be inconsolably sad. We can really say about this grief that no one can ever be consoled about someone who ed away. Consolation is not only a question of emotions. Someone can be consoled only if he has the assurance that he will again see his loved one who ed away.

However, seeing someone again can happen only if there is life after death. The Apostle Paul has a message to believers: you my friends, my brothers don’t be sad because of those in the cemetery, because the reason for your grief is either ignorance or denial, the denial of life after death. However, the truth is that as Jesus Christ of Nazareth rose from the dead, there is one person who rose from the dead, and it means that the final destination of someone’s life is not death, but life after death. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ validated life after death, and therefore, the foundation of Christian hope is life after death. Whoever has the opportunity for life after death will consider that even during his earthly life, and he will make wise decisions considering the fact that he will have life after death.

The Resurrection of Jesus is the Proof

What the Apostle Paul emphasizes to the Thessalonians is extremely important. He says that life doesn’t come from humans or some impersonal, supernatural, transcendent reality, but from one person, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Because if Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead, we wouldn’t have any reason during our lifetime to develop any kind of hope or faith in life after death. However, as Jesus rose from the dead, even during our earthly life we must have a conviction, a heavenly perspective. This is the most essential, integral, central element of the Christian faith and attitude. Resurrection is the proof that clearly confirms that people do not perish with death. They don’t have some intangible, mystical, life after death, but a much greater, more fulfilling life than they had on the Earth. As life after death comes from Jesus Christ, people will not have an inferior life to the life they had on the Earth, but their lives will be taken to a much higher level, to a greater presence of life. Resurrection, therefore, is the proof of life after death. If there wasn’t life after death, there would be no resurrection. That is exactly why the New Testament puts great emphasis on the fact that Jesus Christ of Nazareth rose from the dead, to give people life after death, and their attitude toward ing and death should be defined by hope. This hope will not end, even when they move from this earthly life because the foundation of this hope can’t be eroded by death. Life after death, which was brought into this visible world by Jesus Christ, has a greater power and authority than life that is subject to death or death itself. The message of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that life has the victory! You can have life after death not because of some difficult evolutionary process, nor because of some natural laws, but because of one person, Jesus Christ. You can have life after death because of Him. If you have a relationship with Him, you will have life after death, if you don’t have a relationship with Him, you haven’t found the source of life after death yet. That’s why people must get saved! Many times Christianity and the New Testament are attacked for being exclusive as they claim that someone can get to God only through Jesus Christ. Some people say there are many paths to the top of a mountain, so why can’t people reach the top (God) in many different ways. My answer, which is actually the answer of the Bible, is that the God of the Bible is not the God of the dead but the God of the living. Death, therefore, is not part of life, but it’s a reality that opposes life. So where there is death, God is not present.

In the Old Testament, it is emphasized that death must be separated from life, so the living would not come in with corpses. It was important to keep the cleansing ritual that God ordained so He could lead people as life-centered beings on this Earth and so they would not turn to death but they should consider their most important task: to seek life, to desire life and to become life-centered. The great task is to conquer death! Mankind hasn’t been able to fulfill this task. The material world and its laws haven’t been able fulfill it either. As we read in Romans: for the material world is in bondage to decay and yearns for freedom and the foundation of this freedom is living hope. With this cosmic expectation the whole universe expects the glory and appearance of God in the visible, material world. As a result of this, there will be a change in the quality of the material law. It will create more favorable circumstances for those living here. Somehow it will lift up the material into the glory of God. That’s why it’s a really important statement in the Bible that we expect new heavens and a new Earth. The Christian hope looks forward to a new universe. It doesn’t just expect that people will rise from the dead, but also a new universe that will provide the resurrected, incorruptible, immortal body with better circumstances. The resurrection of Jesus is an absolutely unique event. There’s not even a small sign that founders of other religions ever rose from the dead. As they didn’t, they can’t even that there is life after death. Life after death can be credibly verified only by someone who came back from the dead and lives forever. This is the first requirement and this is exactly what the Gospel says about Jesus. The important thing that proves life after death is that the Holy Spirit came down to the Earth. The Spirit of God would have never come to this Earth if there was no life after death for people. One of the main purposes of the coming of the Holy Spirit is to prepare people for the future and to guide them on their way so that after death they can attain life where they are filled with the glory of God. The characteristics of the Spirit of God are the same as the characteristics of the person of God. As God doesn’t have a relationship with death, nor does the Spirit of God. It turns away from it. Psalm 88 is testimony to this as it discusses Sheol, the world of death. This dark

part of afterlife embodies an atmosphere of terror and horror directly because of the complete lack of God’s presence. That is why it is the place of darkness. Where God is not present, there is no life. Where God is not present there’s no divine power, which is why there is no power in hell, in Hades. There are people on this Earth who are hungry and thirsty for the truth, who seek life and hope in the fact that there is life after death. These people can enter the presence of God even on this Earth. The only requirement is that they accept the fact that there is life after death because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. If you accept this fact, your life will be opened to the presence of God. You will see a hidden world that was hidden from you by death itself. After describing the birth of Jesus and the beginning of his ministry, one of the first, and very important revelations of the gospel is that the Earth is sitting in darkness, in the shadow of death. It points out that death, like a gigantic evil power, has control over the whole Earth and mankind, it influences the human heart, and as a result people have a hard time finding life or the source of life. In order to find the source of life, people need God to intervene in their lives. They need Him to liberate their hearts from the oppression of the shadow of death, to light a fire on the inside of them, and to get to know life after death, as life is the light of people. If you realize that there is eternal life, you will have light in your heart.

Are the Dead Resurrected?

Let’s see what the Apostle Paul said about this to the Greeks in Corinth; some of whom said that there was no resurrection of the dead, or in other words, no life after death.

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the

dead, then not even Christ has been raised. (…) And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. /1 Corinthians 15: 12-13, 17-22/

Obviously, because of the influence of the Hellenistic-Greek culture, some Corinthians claimed that there was no resurrection of the dead. I would like to point out that this view is not the same as the materialistic view today, as the latter one believes that death destroys people and the only thing that remains is the corpse. In this way, people’s souls and spirits would die as well and they wouldn’t exist anymore. This is not what the Greeks believed. As we can see in the epic of Homer, in the scene when Odysseus entered Hades, they thought that when someone died his soul would lose power and shrink into a shadow as it was deprived of all power and life. They considered afterlife an inferior shadow as compared to earthly life. Another important statement of this type of Hellenistic-Greek thinking was that the human soul would shrink into a shadow and would forever remain in captivity as a prisoner of Hades, never to return. This includes the immortality of the soul, but not life, the dynamis or power that people had during their earthly lives, so according to ancient Greeks, people surely suffer some loss when they die. This is a kind of spiritualized understanding of salvation that we can see even today in certain Christian denominations. In opposition to this view, the Apostle Paul says that this statement is not logical when we compare it to Biblical facts. As the Gospels state, Jesus Christ of Nazareth died and rose again. It’s not by accident that in this chapter Paul lists all the proofs that were available at that time: to all the apostles, to the 500 disciples and last of all the resurrected Jesus appeared to me also, and “I’m convinced that this man is alive” /1 Corinthians 15: 7-8/ – he says. If he’s alive, it proves that there is life after death.

If you say, therefore, that there is no resurrection of the dead, you also say that there is no life after death. If we say that there is no life after death, we indirectly deny the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. Therefore, if we say that Jesus rose from the dead, it’s necessary to also believe that in Jesus Christ all people have life after death. Furthermore, this interpretation of life goes against the Greek view that the shadow-being and shadow-people are suffering in Hades. Odysseus was also frightened by the condition of this world, how even great kings and famous people end up in Hades. Contrary to this, the Apostle Paul says that life after death is nothing less than Christ-like life: immortal, incorruptible, spiritual, without sin, above death. In Christ people do have immortal, incorruptible, complete, eternal life without sin. That’s why the Gospel is good news. If it wasn’t so, the Gospel would be just a piece of art similar to Greek epics which deeply shock people’s souls but they can’t bring true cleansing or show a way out. In these epics the contradictions can’t be solved and there’s no positive ending; no promise or outcome that hope can be based on.

Adam and Jesus

The opposition between life and death is dissolved by the resurrection, and thank God it was resolved by the resurrection of Jesus Christ! The Apostle Paul pleads: People! Don’t say that there is no resurrection of the dead! If you say that, there’s simply no point in living. If Jesus Christ hadn’t risen from the dead, we are crooks, we live in sin and we will all perish. If it was so, when we encounter death, it will completely deprive people; it will take their lives, their power, peace and wealth. Death will irrevocably take everything from people. “If we hope only in this life in Christ, we are more miserable than all other men” /1. Corinthians 15:19/ – says Paul. Many people can live their lives without Jesus, but without Jesus Christ nobody can find life after death. Those who don’t want to lose, even at the last minute, but want to move from time to eternity, from this earthly life to gain in the Kingdom of God, have to reconcile with Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

In Him there is life after death but not only that, life that can conquer death was also realized in Jesus Christ! That’s why Paul emphasizes: People, you must understand death was not forced on mankind by God! God is not the reason for the reign of death, but the first man, Adam. Because of him life ended in death. If one man had the power to lead life into death, there must have been a man who could lead human destiny out of the stagnant water and the swamp of death, and who could give mankind a kind of life that is above death, that can conquer death and that is life after death. As God didn’t plan death for people, death is not some kind of mystical phenomenon, but simply the loss of life, separation and deprivation from it. In death everything is over: the decisions, choices, free movement, performance and active existence! The Apostle Paul emphasizes that death came because of one man, as what happened was not God’s original will. Man, however, surrendered his life to the power of death as a consequence of his own sin. Death is the enemy of men, which puts an end to meaningful human existence. As death was not of God, it was necessary to bring a solution for this through a man. According to the Bible, this man is the Messiah, the Anointed One, and the Savior. The New Testament names this person; he is Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This man gave life after death back to people and he has just as much or even greater influence than Adam. These two men fundamentally determined human life. Adam shared the fall with all men, and he subjected all men to the power of death. Jesus, however, came, died and rose again, and he put an end to death. The reign of death is over! The resurrection of Jesus means: „Death, stop! Your influence and power is over!” There’s a new rule now, and that is the Kingdom of the Messiah itself; his reign that is full of life.

Chapter five

A Message From the Afterlife

In this chapter I want to talk about an extremely interesting story from Luke 16. The Bible rarely gives us direct insight into what happens in the afterlife, but now we will look at a story that tells us about an afterlife event and people’s destiny after death. Many people today don’t care about this. They believe that if they are completely ignorant, they can change the facts after death. However, in doing nothing they are not going to be able to influence this fact, and that’s why ignorance is dangerous because people don’t make any effort to favorably consider certain facts about what happens after death that can relate to their or other people’s lives. However, life has a very important goal for people, and that is to reach life after death if we have the opportunity to do so. We are glad we were born, but if we were thrown into such trouble that we must die one day, of course we would want to know how we can get out of this pit. The Bible says:”Yes, there’s a way”! We can break out of this situation, and the most important task of human life is to find a way out of this evil cycle, which is the resurrection itself that ended the reign of death over people. There is life after death! Even when people die, they can live again. God’s will about salvation and life after death is fulfilled in different ways in the various eras of the existence mankind as we can see in the following story. It shows that the situation was different before the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ But Abraham replied, ‘Son, that in your lifetime you received

your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’ He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ /Luke 16: 19-31/

First of all, I would like to refute a misinterpretation of this story. The rich man didn’t go to hell because he was rich, and the poor man didn’t get to Abraham’s side because he was poor. At the end of the story we can understand that the rich man went to hell because he didn’t listen to Moses and the prophets, he didn’t repent of his sins. That’s why he asked God’s permission to come back to the earthly life (for example on All Saint’s Day) to knock on his brothers’ door and tell them that he was in big trouble because he didn’t get saved, and he had to live in hell forever:”I came to tell you, I made a big mistake by not listening to Moses or the prophets. That’s why I couldn’t find the path to life. I can’t take part in the fellowship of Abraham anymore, I can’t change my destiny, but I’m telling you to listen to the prophets and Moses, and repent!” This poor man would have liked to tell this to his relatives, but in the spiritual world there is a very strict prison system, much stricter than in state prisons, because there at least you can leave occasionally or you can receive visitors, but not in hell. You don’t even have a TV there! It’s a horrible thing to get to hell because it’s a final punishing facility where people who forgot to make a positive decision about life, can ’enjoy’ fellowship with darkness. They gave up on living after death, they didn’t care about their eternal destiny and what would happen to them when the inevitable end came. It’s not God who punishes those who end up in hell. These people are the ones who say: we don’t care about this question, the only thing we care about is the

new car models, a big house, power, glory and rank. The rich man was the same. For him life was only titles, profit, money and financial wealth. The most important thing for him was to be one of the ten richest people of the country. He could care less about what would happen when death arrived, and he had to leave behind the palace, the gold, his favorite car, his loved ones, the property and his wealth. What will remain of you? Do you know? Is there anything that will remain of you? Yes, there is. You will have a dried up soul. Arrogance and vainglory will leave you, you will lose your pride and superiority, and your elitism will evaporate like snow on a sunny day. If we didn’t have an inevitable destiny after death, who would care about getting saved? We would be happy to live happily on Earth for 70 years. But listen now. The Bible says that everyone has life after death, a path that he will follow even then. One path is without life, and the other is full of life. You must make a decision regarding this path here and now, while you are alive on earth. Even if you don’t choose, you will have your destiny after death! This is what happened to the rich man, too. His earthly life was so full of enjoyment, that he may have never had the time to really think about life and recognize the deepest needs of his heart and soul, which is life itself. It’s not how much you possess, you need that too, but what you need the most is this life. The kind of life which even death surrenders to and says: I put down my weapons and turn back! You need the kind of life that ensures that when your heart and soul leave your body, their destiny will be committed into the hands of the angels of the Lord, and they will transport them to the right place on a heavenly elevator. We can agree that this story doesn’t condemn someone because of social differences. Nor does it redeem someone for the same reason. It’s obvious, however, that when someone loses interest about his life and destiny after death, he will start to compensate himself with all kinds of material possessions and will be bound to do useless things. For example, he wants to become great on this Earth, he wants to be fulfilled in a perfectionist sort of way. He will never be satisfied with anything, and he will always want more and more power, money and enjoyment.

Many times the reason for hedonism is that a person loses his sensitivity to the transcendent. If someone is open in his heart and soul to his destiny after death, he can’t be uninterested in what is going to happen to him. Then he will start thinking about it and planning it, especially if he receives the blueprint that the Bible has and offers to him regarding these plans. We can see that poor Lazarus lived his earthly life full of hope. He had many diseases, lived in misery and poverty, but he always expected to receive some comfort. And he did receive some – but only from a dog. Because even a dog has more mercy toward his fellow man than a conceited person. The Bible has a very important message here, sometimes even a dog can be more humane than a man who lives his existence in his wealth, material things or lifeless theories. The other great moral of the story is that in their destiny after death, people keep their personality traits. They can communicate, and they can recognize each other. However, there the condition of the two people was really different. One ended up in a place of torment (where we can see that life lacks everything) because he rejected life. He kept his mere existence and this entitled this bodiless creature only the realization that he lacked everything. This is horror itself! What’s more, he found out that he was able to enjoy his sinful, godless, rebellious life only as long as he could use the things God prepared. All these, however, were taken from him in hell. This is what hell is all about. If you could satisfy your sexual desire in your earthly life, and lived an immoral life, your personality will still have this desire after death, but you will have no one to fornicate with, and this desire will torment and torture you. This will be the same with other sins as well, because the source of sin is the desire, and this desire will remain unsatisfied in your personality. One difference between life on the Earth and life after death is that now people can satisfy their desires, but in hell, it will not be so, because there nothing is enjoyable, there are no opportunities or wealth. A person is thrust into the presence of condemned creatures, and there is no way out. That is why it does matter whether you win or lose, whether you get condemned or get saved, whether you go to hell or Heaven. That’s when people usually say that we, Christians terrify people. We don’t want to terrify anyone, but reality itself is

terrifying. The moment you make a contract with the one who has life after death, and who has the power to give you life after death, this will not even be terrifying anymore.

On the Two Sides of the Pit

The other important factor is the impenetrable pit. Both people from the story went to Sheol, but it was divided into two parts. One part was Paradise, a place of comfort. Lazarus went there, and took part in the life of Abraham. He was in fellowship with him. Paradise is obviously the place of comfort. Contrary to the Greek world view, the life of Lazarus became richer after his death than it was in his earthly life. He received more good, more power, and more blessings in his destiny after death than in his earthly life. (Through rationalizing, the Greeks could not figure out how the destinies of people differ from each other after death.) On the contrary, the soul of the rich man ended up in a much worse condition than it was on the Earth, because he went to the place of torment. The next important message in this story is that neither of them was ever able to leave they arrived to. In the afterlife there’s no exchange of positions. In hell, all human empathy disappears, because there’s such a divine order there that the punished soul can’t leave his place, nor can a saved soul enter the place of punishment, because the whole place is under the reign of God’s justice. The condemned person wanted to come up from the world of the dead to warn the living:”Listen, don’t waste your life, don’t use drugs, but repent and turn to the living God!” He wanted to tell his lewd relatives and friends to put an end to this lifestyle. Abraham, however, informed him that he couldn’t do that:”You can’t go, because they are not going to listen anyway.” If these people want to get saved, they can go to the synagogue, and listen to the Word of God. Whoever accepts it will live by it, and those who reject it can’t be helped even by the dead. It wouldn’t work, even if the dead told them, “We are in a big trouble. Listen to us. Think over how you live and what kind of lifestyle you have!” In this story, Jesus wants to tell us that the dead have no influence on the living,

nor can the living influence the destiny of the dead, because they have no idea what kind of afterlife their deceased relatives have. There’s a huge gap between these two worlds that can’t be bridged. Therefore, the most important responsibility of the living is to make good decisions here on Earth - that’s what Jesus calls our attention to. As long as we live on the Earth we can make decisions; the justice of God doesn’t prevail yet in our lives, and we can gain a lot by grace. We must say yes to life after death as long as we live here in the flesh in our earthly lives. We can say ‘yes’ by accepting Jesus Christ of Nazareth as our Savior, by accepting his redeeming sacrifice and by receiving forgiveness for our sins and eternal life.

The Road to Glory

In the above story Jesus makes it clear that up until the New Testament people went to Sheol after their death. This story took place in the Old Testament. But what does the New Testament say about this? The message of the New Testament is that we have a better hope. It means that we have a straight road to heaven, to the presence of God, because the resurrection of Jesus Christ made a crucial change. When Stephen was questioned and found guilty before the Sanhedrin, he wasn’t stoned because his ministry was so powerful and compelling, but because he told his audience that he saw a man in heaven standing at the right hand of God. /Acts Chapter 7/ This announcement had such great importance like announcing that there’s a man on the Moon - just much greater! The Old Testament hope means that someone’s life after death continues in Paradise or in the Bosom of Abraham, which are close to the presence of God but are not the same. On the contrary to this, Stephen announced a revolutionary change, which was considered blasphemy as they thought that whoever was saved would get to the Bosom of Abraham, the place of comfort in Sheol, but he surely won’t get to heaven. It is a truly pagan idea that people go to heaven unconditionally. Reality is not that simple, and Jewish theology was well aware of this. In order for someone to

get to heaven, he must go through the universe between heaven and Earth, and a road must be prepared for this. The preparation of this road has to do with the name of Jesus who, with his resurrection and ascension to heaven, ensured that life after death of those who are saved would continue not in the better part of Sheol but in the presence of God. That’s why Jesus tells his disciples:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” /John 14:1-4/

In the New Testament, therefore, eternal life after death is in Heaven, in Jesus Christ. As we can meet Jesus Christ of Nazareth here in our earthly life, we can receive life after death even now, and this makes our hope sure. This is the hope that can vitalize us and make us happy. This hope will shame us, because the foundation of this hope is stronger than death. Death is subject to this hope. If someone is in Jesus Christ and rooted in this hope, he will go straight to heaven and will live a glorious and immortal life in the glory and presence of God. This is what the salvation message is about: Man, get saved and get your salvation. Get your eternal, immortal life after death so you will not perish and get to hell, but get to heaven to the glory of God - forever.

Chapter six

At the Gate of Grace

We really need our hope to be renewed and strengthened. We need the second type of hope, the vertical hope, to be born in those who don’t know this type of hope. As we mentioned before, there are two types of hope: First, the natural hope that focuses on the future. People expect their goals and dreams to be fulfilled in the future. Secondly, the upward hope that focuses on eternity. The foundation of this hope is Jesus Christ of Nazareth who went into the real sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, so that he would become a redeeming sacrifice before the Almighty. He’s not only a redeeming sacrifice, but also a High Priest who distributes the good things and the blessings. That is why Christian hope is not only horizontal, but also vertical and it embraces eternity.

The First Bethesda

Now let’s look at a story that is about the second type of hope which is anchored in eternity:

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” /John 5:1-8 /

The time of Jesus was really different from today’s world. The name Bethesda means ‘the gate of grace’. Then, in the time of Jesus, there was a place in Jerusalem which people called the gate of grace. People who were considered incurable were placed here because they couldn’t be helped with natural treatments. In the time of Jesus, it was obviously very important that every person would have a chance to have hope. If in a society there is no vertical or living hope, as the Apostle Peter calls it, and someone is in need or trouble for which society and science has no solution, then the life of a person is finished. We must note that the time of Jesus (about which even the Bible had many negative comments) put great emphasis on making it possible even for incurable, miserable, oppressed people to have hope. When human strength, knowledge and abilities, society, families, the state, or medical science were not able to help someone, this person was not written off or thrown aside. The final countdown didn’t start for him. These people were taken to Bethesda, the gate of grace, and they were given over to divine visitation. The people and the sick people themselves, who decided to be placed at the pool of Bethesda, were all people of hope. They didn’t go there hopelessly, as most of the sick were not able to go there on their own, and they waited. They were waiting for the messenger of God to intervene in the condition of the pool and to release divine healing power. Thus, the person who got into the pool when it was stirred first was able to get a hold of the healing power and was healed immediately. These people were waiting there the whole time. They waited to see when divine intervention would come down from heaven, when divine help would arrive. When this wait focuses upwards, it is a ive wait, which means that we want to profit from another person’s activity. There’s also active hope, when we plow with the hope in mind that once we complete the work, we will see the result of plowing, and we will harvest. The object of our hope here is the harvest. The essence of this second type of hope, focuward, is divine intervention. The hope that help or blessing will come down from God, and it will have a positive change in someone’s life. The objective is not the near future (even though God’s intervention will take place in the future) but eternity. We put our trust in the characteristics of the eternal God and in his promises, which we will talk more about later.

Moral values during the time of Jesus were stronger than today in that they didn’t destroy the Bethesdas. They considered both the operation of these Bethesdas and getting people there very important. If we, as people, are unable help our fellow man, they should at least have the opportunity to get to the gate of grace! The first part of this story of the Gospel shows that it is hope in the living God that places people at the gate of grace. You are entitled to this living hope even if you are said to be incurable, and people can’t help you anymore. Don’t give up hope even then! This is one of the messages of the Bethesda.

All Things are Possible for God

For the Almighty God all things are possible. We shouldn’t ignore a very important truth which is emphasized throughout the Bible: one of the most important characteristics of God is His omnipotence. He is able to achieve His plans, expectations and execute His wisdom in all circumstances - whenever He wants to. The great question is whether He wants to. The whole Gospel testifies that God does want to lift people up from their misery and oppression. He wants them to be lifted up from their unsolved problems because sooner or later everyone realizes that they can’t solve certain questions. As a result, the greater part of his life, or maybe the rest of his life (according to human estimate) will involve suffering. The main reason for suffering is unfulfilled needs. We talk about justified needs or goals which people know can’t be fulfilled, because their friends or family, society or the state don’t have the key that’s needed to solve these seemingly insolvable problems. As in a secular worldview, church denominations, the state, and later the nation, was considered almighty. People were misled, lied to and given a false illusion, as if society, the state or denominations could fulfill people’s deepest, most basic needs. However, we have known for a long time that everyday facts contradict this! We have found that when we face a basic human need that other people,

society or friends can’t help to fulfill we are extremely alone. This loneliness can thrust people into frustration, hopelessness, fear or dread. That’s why I state it again that the time of Jesus was more sensitive to this issue, because people who seemed beyond help were picked up and taken to the gate of grace, so they would have hope. Furthermore, this hope had a real, supernatural foundation. This foundation is completely available to us in the New Testament, and our hope which is vertical, focused on the omnipotence of God has a constant, stable foundation. People who trust in the Lord never give up this hope. When others around me say:”You can’t be saved!”, this certain hope makes me say, ”That’s not true that I can’t be saved. I have a God who can save everyone.” This kind of hope says that as I have God, and my God is Almighty. All things are possible for him so, therefore, I always have a way of escape. When other people say, “Give up. Don’t keep trying. Don’t expect anything good from life.”, you can still say, “No, I will keep expecting good things.” because the essence of hope is the expectation of good. If I can’t expect anything good from my family, society or the state, then I expect something good from the Almighty God.

Reach Out to the Almighty God

This story calls our attention to the fact that it’s worth putting our hope in the Almighty God because then we will never give up when challenges come, we will never say we can’t take it anymore, or there’s no point in doing anything, but for us life will have a purpose at all times and in all circumstances. As these disabled, blind, lame and paralyzed people were full of hope, expecting the water to be stirred, a suffering person today can have his hope also, and it means that he reaches out to the Almighty God. As the angel of the Lord came to the pool of Bethesda, grabbed the hands of these miserable people and lifted them out of their oppression, in the same way the Lord helps you today because the Word of God says that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. If you stretch out your hand in hope, the Almighty God is there, even today. He

takes your hand and delivers you out of your misery and problems. The message of the Word of God for you is that you shouldn’t give up hope even if all natural facts and circumstances suggest that your hope has no real foundation. The Word of God definitely says that it’s worth hoping. It’s worth waiting on God because your God is good, and He always wants to give you good things. As long as you live, as long as you exist in this body, you have the chance for good things. So don’t fall into the trap of negativism. Don’t say that things will be worse and worse for you here on Earth because it’s nothing but a deep pit of pessimism. God sent His only son, Jesus Christ, so you will not be a pessimist, but a person of hope; so you could be born again to a living hope, and the object of your hope would be the eternal, Almighty God! Unfortunately, as we mentioned before, in today’s society these Bethesdas don’t work. What’s more, we can see that there are so many human problems that can’t be solved in families, countries and nations, regardless of the fact that we have already survived the reign of the idea of all powerful church denominations, the all powerful state and the all powerful nation. We can see that all these things have ed away, but the problems remained. What this proves is that the Bethesdas need to be restored. I mean places that are the gates of grace. The gate of grace is the place where the natural world encounters the supernatural. The place where human meets divine, where the material meets the Spirit of God, where God shares good things and blessings. Therefore, Bethesda is not only the place of misery, but also the place of escape. I would like to mention one more thing here. Many people would say:”So do you say that Christianity is the religion of the oppressed, the miserable and the incurable?” Yes, that’s what I’m preaching about. Christianity is the religion of the oppressed, the miserable and the incurable. However, the Bible states that misery means not only physical misery, but the condition of your soul and spirit can cause you greater misery and trouble than the problems of your body. If we consider the whole human personality, meaning that we examine the condition of the spirit, the soul and the body of a person, we can say that this world, this Earth, seems to be a very miserable planet. It holds the masses of oppressed, bereaved and confused people, some of whom are oppressed in their physical bodies, or suffering emotionally or mentally. In general, we can say that everyone has his own problem that entitles him to a place at the gate of grace; to

position himself where the Almighty God can intervene, where divine visitation is expected, where the Spirit and the power of God can come down to stir people’s personality just as it stirred up the water of the pool of Bethesda.

The Birth of New Bethesdas

As we mentioned before, in the Bible water often represents people, and the movement of the water or the changes in people’s lives are caused by the Spirit of God. Great times in history always started when it was not the churches who struggled to try to solve problems on their own, but the Spirit of God came down and touched people on the inside, their hearts, souls and bodies, and it created a permanent change in them. God wants the gates of grace to be built even today so people will know that there are Bethesdas today, there are gates of grace where they can go to restore their ruined lives, where the oppressed and the captives can break free, and where people who have ruined their lives can change their ways and continue on the right path. At the gates of grace even those who were suffering in the torment of the fear of death can be delivered. Bethesdas today are the communities and churches where divine visitation takes place, where Jesus Christ of Nazareth is present by the Spirit of God, where the Spirit of God touches people’s bodies, souls and spirits. We can see in the Gospel of John that at the time of Jesus the Pool of Bethesda was in Jerusalem. Those who go to Jerusalem can see for themselves that the Pool of Bethesda exists even today, but only its remains: a little puddle, a little stale water here and there. It’s sad to see the condition of Bethesda, where the angel of the Lord used to descend regularly. This place conveyed the power and grace of God. The former place of blessing is in ruins! I believe that the condition of Bethesda in Jerusalem prophetically shows the spiritual and moral state of the world today, and its attitude toward God. I have good news though: Bethesdas will be built again! The power and the hand of God will restore the gates of grace again in every nation, and history will not end

in tragedy or in a dark destiny or nil, in accordance with pessimistic expectations, but on the path of living hope these gates will lead to the Kingdom of God. After Pentecost, a spiritual Bethesda was born in Jerusalem. Bethesda, as said before, is a place where the power and the Spirit of God come down from heaven and meet people, touching and changing human lives, and where those who are in need can experience the presence of God. At Pentecost the coming of the Holy Spirit brought the New Testament continuation of the Old Testament Bethesda. Let’s take a look at what this spiritual Bethesda, the early church and the mother church, was like, because the mother church of the Christian church was the fellowship of the saints in Jerusalem. What does the Word of God say about the prototype of all churches, about the spiritual reality of the New Testament Bethesda?

The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade. No one else dared them, even though they were highly regarded by the people. Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he ed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed. /Acts 5:12-16 /

The Wind of Incurability

As we mentioned before, the Bible definitely states that everyone is incurable, and it’s just a question of time when we come to that realization. Sooner or later everyone will be touched by the wind of incurability, and then they realize that they are past hope. This recognition can radically change your destiny! There are some people who try to escape from acknowledging this, and keep postponing facing this fact till the end of their lives. It won’t help them because they will just keep turning away from making the most important decision during their

earthly lives. It could have been done in time, long before their death, if they had taken the time to think over the most crucial facts about their lives which characterize human life on Earth, its final destination and the opportunities after that. The poison of incurability catches up with everyone after a while no matter how powerful the person is, no matter what a successful, strong, educated and talented person we are talking about. Many people are unprepared and caught by surprise by the inevitable situation when there’s a voice on the inside, and it crushes their consciousness and their sense and imagination of reality and life. Nothing else remains but dying, traveling toward an unknown world or even the fear of destruction. When someone experiences these feelings, and these kinds of thoughts come up in his soul, he steps on the path of hopelessness, and he is ground under the millstones of incurability. That is when things start changing. What seemed important before will not be important anymore. This is a really important crossroad. It can mean a change of direction toward the gate of grace, a sign from the kingdom of eternity and a pull toward the supernatural. The only problem is when this moment of realization arrives very late. Then people say, “I ruined my whole life. I have no chance to fix anything only to make an agreement with my God and Savior in the last moment.” This is still a good decision, but not the best solution to treat an incurable life. The best is to seek the gate of grace, even when you are young, and you are at the threshold of success, so you will never forget that you need the grace and help of God even when you are on the ladder toward success. Solomon warns:”…and the years approach when you will say, I find no pleasure in them.” /Eccl. 12:1/ Why do you find no pleasure in them? Because “the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken.” /Eccl. 12:6/ What keeps human life together is severed, the bowl is broken, and you can feel the pain and the spirit of mourning. We don’t like the days when our natural strength is waning, our pace slows down and we can see more and more signs of ageing on ourselves. These days are especially tragic when someone realizes that all along he cared only about material things, things that profited the body maybe, and he didn’t

care about what was on the inside. He didn’t give anything to his invisible inner self, neither time nor energy. He never satisfied his spiritual desires and never gave his heart what it was longing for. His soul inside became like the man lying at Bethesda who had been ill for 38 years. The only difference was that he didn’t even have hope. This is the incurability that, like a poisonous viper, can fatally bite people sooner or later. The Bible says that if we hear the Word of God, we shouldn’t harden our hearts because God gives us knowledge not only about Himself, but He also shows us a realistic picture of ourselves. It’s not only God that people don’t know, they don’t even know themselves. To get to know ourselves, to realistically see the condition we are in, we need to know the truth about God, and the Bible. If we open our hearts before the Word of God, we don’t have to experience incurability. We can see our real condition and situation in the mirror of the Word of God, and the power of God immediately gives us His healing balm. The Master is standing at Bethesda, keeping his eyes on those who have hope even in hopelessness, and He lifts up those who are suffering.

The Whole Earth Will Become Bethesda

Today is the day of salvation. The day of salvation means that God gives grace not only for the forgiveness of sins, but he also opens up the eyes of your understanding so that besides God’s wisdom and reality you can see the basic characteristics of human life and destiny that are inevitable for everyone if he remains alone. If you are left alone, you can’t find the gate of grace, instead, your life will go toward the gate of despair. You will drift toward fear, anxiety and pessimism. The message of the Gospel is that that’s exactly why you should take courage and build up the gate of grace in your life. Put yourself in a place where God can get hold of your life and He can touch you. Don’t be a closed world before God; don’t exclude Him of your life! God sent Jesus for you to receive Him, but as it happened during His earthly life, many people don’t accept Him today either. In Nazareth, in the city of His childhood, He couldn’t do the things that He could do in other places where they welcomed Him and believed in Him.

Receive Jesus into your heart, and He will take you to the gate of grace! If things happen to you that obviously show that you don’t have a chance for natural hope, you still have another opportunity, another path, another life where you can grab hold of things that you lost in the natural, which had disappeared before you. It’s good to place your life in a safe place with God. When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem, the presence of God stirred up the lives of these people. The human spirit, and the human heart are like a stale lake, if it’s not touched by the supernatural reality of God, they move toward desolation, emptiness and loss of values. I don’t even understand people who say about themselves that they seek God, but they don’t have a need for God’s supernatural power to come down on them. The gate of grace is the place where we can enter the supernatural, where we can meet God and where we can touch His power, life and authority. This is what the church and the local congregation is all about. The real church, the early church and the charismatic congregations since then all operate like Bethesdas. The church in Jerusalem was a Bethesda church by all means. People were filled with the power and Spirit of God and during the services there were no programs prepared well in advance, but unusual events happened. It was because the anointing came down on them from heaven. During the Old Testament the angels brought the anointing from heaven, and the Spirit of God did great things even then. However, in the New Testament the anointing is the Holy Spirit himself. He descended on the disciples, and we can see that the birth of the new Bethesda was accompanied by many signs and wonders. The ‘many signs and wonders’ mean that not only one person was healed, but dozens or even hundreds and thousands of people were healed. The Bible says that wherever Peter walked in the streets of Jerusalem, for example when he went from Mount Zion, where the Upper-House was according to tradition, to the Temple Mount, people already knew in advance where he was going, because wherever he went, Bethesda went with him. Bethesda was in Peter! The anointing and the power that brought healings and deliverances in Bethesda moved into Peter, the apostles and the disciples. People could have said to each other this time:”Now we have not only one Bethesda, the Lord heals not just occasionally but deliverance and healing became continuous. We have a real Bethesda which was created by the Spirit of God”. The hand of God was on Peter, the Spirit of God rested on him, and

whoever his shadow fell on was healed that very moment. The news of these healings and deliverances reached into all layers of society. Peers must have told people about the living flow of healings and miracles that was all around them like this:”People, there is hope, we can hope in the living God! If trouble comes, we know where we have to take the sick. We know that those who suffer must be taken to the Bethesda church in Jerusalem, on Mount Zion, where there are people who have a living fellowship with the Almighty God by the Holy Spirit.” God wants these Bethesdas to live, to be built up, to improve and grow. On the other hand, He wants people to be brave enough to enter these Bethesdas and there receive their healings and deliverance so they can find real solutions to their problems. During the era of the all powerful church, states, and nations, people were quite intimidated, oppressed, misinformed, and with all this, the hope in the living God was artificially destroyed in their hearts and souls. The liberation of this is going on all over the world, in every nation right now, because the Spirit of God is blowing and nothing can stop Him. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. /2 Corinthians 3:17/ The words of the prophet Joel are being fulfilled before our very eyes these days:

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. /Acts 2:17/

In the last days, according to the prophet, the whole Earth will become Bethesda! The power and authority of God will sweep through the nations so the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the captive will be set free, the sinners will have forgiveness of their sins, the dead will rise and the hopeless will lift their

heads with renewed vitality.

Chapter seven

The Hoping Faith

It’s very important to know that the foundation of our faith is the hope we have been talking about until now. We can find the definition of faith in the book of Hebrews. For now, I would like to talk about only the first part of the sentence.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for... /Hebrews 11:1 - New King James Version/

This definition clearly shows that hope comes before faith. If there’s no hope, faith can’t be born. First, we have to wait for certain things, and trust that they will happen. The time will come. We already mentioned that these can be earthly, emotional, or spiritual things as well. Hope, therefore, always focuses on things to come, and once my hope finds its subject I already have a thing hoped for in my life that I can wait for it in a positive way. For example, one thing that is hoped for is life after death, about which we have already mentioned that its foundation is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Adam ended human life, and Jesus Christ ended human death. Glory to God! With this Jesus Christ brought life after death. Therefore, the most important subject of Christian hope, one of the most important things hoped for, is life after death or eternal life, which is not only after death but also above death, and it’s able to destroy death. Another important thing hoped for is the forgiveness of sins, because if there’s no forgiveness of sins, people can’t get in relationship with God. They will not have an inner touch, and human existence is not able to become the stage where the two worlds meet. It’s really significant and very exiting when someone’s thinking changes, when the human heart and soul are filled with values, when the human life becomes the meeting point of the natural and the supernatural divine life. These encounters make someone the man of God, and change him in their conditions. They cause changes that alter someone’s innermost being until these changes bring in the things hoped for in his life, and someone starts hoping from then on. ”I hope I will go to heaven. I hope I will have eternal life. I hope I will take part in the resurrection. I hope! I hope for the forgiveness of sins. I

hope for healing, I hope for deliverance!” When I hope, the thing hoped for is getting closer to me. Faith comes after hope. It follows it, and further develops hope. It gives reality to the thing hoped for. It brings the thing hoped for into the present for you. Because the thing hoped for is in the future, in eternity. Hope speaks in future tense, that God will do it. However, faith claims in the present that you have the forgiveness of your sins. It’s more than hope, because hope just says, ”I will be healed.” It’s very important to have this hope, because the thing hoped for is the object of your faith. So when you have hope you must develop faith in the Word of God which, when it gets to the level of the true Biblical faith, brings the things hoped for into your present. It makes it present, and you will say, “Yes, here it is! I got it. Hallelujah!”

The High Priest of Good Things to Come

When you surrender to pessimism, you restrict your faith. In the Bible, we can read about Jesus of Nazareth: But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say… /Hebrews 9:11/

What does this mean? It means that God anointed Jesus Christ of Nazareth as a man to become Christ and Lord. Jesus Christ appeared as a man on this Earth, He emptied Himself of His divine nature and took upon Himself a human form and a human nature. He suffered on the cross of Calvary and rose from the dead as a human. Then He went to heaven to become a redeeming sacrifice for all men – forever. Let’s stop for a moment! The purpose of the redeeming sacrifice was to pay off, to take away and erase debt; to stop hostility between God and men and to bring

peace instead. This peace was brought by the blood of redemption. With this redeeming blood Jesus went up to the Father and showed Him the sacrifice that the sacrifice of the Old Testament yom kippur foretold about. Because at yom kippur, the high priest had to enter the Holy of Holies with the blood of an animal to appear before the shekina for the sins of the people and to get forgiveness of sins for the people of Israel. He had to receive not only the forgiveness of sins, but he also had to receive the blessing, the good things of God for the people. This is exactly what Jesus Christ of Nazareth did. After His resurrection, He went up to the heavens to become a redeeming sacrifice before the Father, and High Priest at the same time. To receive the good things from the Father that people fundamentally need – and even good things for abundant life. He wants to fulfill all human need to give an answer to all human problems. That’s why the Book of Hebrews calls Him the High Priest of the good things to come. About faith we have already mentioned that its subject is the things hoped for, and here we are talking about the good things to come so it’s clear that the things hoped for are exactly the good things to come; the High Priest and Distributor of which is Jesus Christ of Nazareth. The High Priest mediates between God and man. We can hear it quite often that we have direct with God. It’s not completely true. We have, however, a High Priest, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and He is the mediator between God and man. He’s a real High Priest, and He came before the Father to get everything that we need, and to give us the right to the good things of God. So we can legally obtain the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, divine nature, healing, deliverance from sins and demonic bonds – or, in other words, the blessings of redemption. These good things are our things hoped for, and we have to practice our faith that these things hoped for will become reality for us. Therefore, the foundation of a living hope is Jesus Christ of Nazareth as the High Priest. Christian hope is based on His High Priestly ministry. To use a political example, you have a representative in the Heavenly Parliament who re you not only when he wants you to vote for him and accept him, but he also re you after you gave him your vote. He will not forget about you. In heaven, with the Father, He always represents your interests. Therefore, when you are at the gate of grace and you say, ”If things continue this

way, I can’t take it anymore. I will quit!”, you must that you have a High Priest, you have a representative at the highest level, who will never forget about you! The prophet Isaiah conveys His words that ”even if your mother forgets about you, I will never forget about you”. /Isaiah 49:14-15/ Which means that you always have a reason to turn to Him with trust and to call upon His name. Jesus Christ promised during His earthly life that ”my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name”. /John 16:23-24/ How can this be? Because He got all this for you. He went up to the Father and He started His ministry as the High Priest there, so He could give you all the good things you need: for your heart, for your soul and for your body as well. Everything that makes you a happy person. The fullness of God is in Him, and from this fullness He wants to share the blessings with you that will make your life flourish, that will make you happy and free, and that will make you victorious even amidst trials, challenges and difficulties! That is why hope focuses on the High Priest of the things to come. We have every reason to believe in hope just like Abraham did. Let’s also look at the main characteristics of hopeful faith, the greatest representative and example of which is Abraham.

The Example: The Faith of Abraham

In Romans Chapter 4 the process of a hoping faith, which is also the faith of Abraham, is explained.

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead — since he was about a hundred years old — and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but

was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. /Romans 4: 18-21/

The Bible uses an expression that might seem like a contradiction: ”against all hope, Abraham in hope believed”. This means that both Abraham and Sarah had enough natural things in their lives that could have contradicted their hope, that could have conveyed a message that there was no point in hoping anymore. The most serious things being the following: Abraham’s dead body, and his wife’s dead womb. If Abraham had focused on these things, this experience would have hindered his hope. However, Abraham didn’t focus on this. That’s why the Bible says that he confessed hoping faith regardless of this. He confessed the promise that he received from God against the natural facts. The promise is the following:”You will be the father of many nations”. Can you feel the tension in the lives of Abraham and Sarah? God told Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, but their natural state contradicted that. Abraham had to make a decision:” Do I choose hopelessness, as I don’t have any reason to hope. The natural facts give me no reason to hope.” But Abraham knew that there is a world greater than the natural world, and that is the Kingdom of God, which is the highest world. He got his promise from this highest world, which was:”Abraham, you will have a son and you will be the father of many nations!” Therefore, Abraham completely ignored the natural facts, and he placed his hoping faith in the divine fact. God blessed him for this. The child of promise was born and later the Jewish nation came from him. That is why we need to bless the Jews and we need to love them because if God hadn’t blessed them, we wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t have the Bible, we wouldn’t have an apostle, we wouldn’t have Jesus Christ, and we wouldn’t have the church either. Hoping faith is based on the promise that is from above. The promise is fact placed in divine words and perspectives. The fact is what God promised, but what Abraham experienced is also a fact. Abraham had to decide what to focus on: the divine fact or the natural human fact. You must that hoping faith always focuses on God! It turned out that he was right because the divine fact always changes natural facts, even if the natural fact seemingly has no

chance to change. The divine fact can still change this, because the Spirit of God can change the created things. The power of God was able to deliver the suffering person in the above mentioned Scripture. Many people wonder why he was the only person Jesus healed at Bethesda. The reason is the contrast between the law and grace. Many of the people there were able to walk a little bit. They had to run fast to be the first ones to get in the water. This shows that they had to abide by some rules, and if they deserved the first place, they got their healing. Then came the New Testament. You don’t have to deserve anything because grace appeared in Jesus Christ! It’s free. God gives it as a gift. He just wants you to put your hoping faith in Him, and don’t think that you can receive healing, the forgiveness of sins and other blessings based on your performance, because God gave this to us all by His Son. It’s written that ”for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”. /John 1:17/ Jesus Christ doesn’t want merits from you, but only one thing- that you hope. With a hoping faith you call upon His name and you will be delivered, healed and you can take part in salvation.

Translated by: Krisztina Somorjai

Proofread by: Shelly Matos

Design editor: Hannawati Raden

Cover, E-book: Márton Petrilla