The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, widely known as COP27, has just been running in Egypt. In a timely new book* Dave Gobbett of Highfields Church Cardiff helps us think through a Biblical perspective on the environment. This extract explains how Jesus’ return might impact our thinking on this issue.
‘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 … The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever’ (1 Thess. 4:14, 16).
The language of meeting the Lord in the air has been understood by some as the grand departure (or ‘rapture’) of Christians from Planet Earth, before being whisked away to eternal pastures new. However, I’m convinced that Paul is instead describing a grand ‘welcoming home’ party as expectant believers usher the Lord Jesus back to earth. This is the return of the King! In fact, Paul’s encouragement of believers in Philippians 3 with the truth that ‘our citizenship is in heaven’ (v.20) concludes similarly: ‘And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body’ (v.20-21).
