"The world is full of these unfulfilled ideas, these uncompleted temples. History does not consist of completed and crumbling ruins; rather it consists of half-built villas abandoned by a bankrupt-builder. This world is more like an unfinished suburb than a deserted cemetery.” — G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World
The is a suburb of Heaven. Jesus Christ ushered in a new earth when He resurrected from the dead. In this new earth, the Sabbath is moved from the seventh day of the week to the first. The Lord's Day is a weekly declaration of a new world order. While God promised Noah that He would never flood the world as He did during his days, He also promised Habakkuk that a flood was coming -- i.e. the world would one day be flooded with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the seas.
Ecclesiastes 7:8-10
Better is the end of a thing than its beginning;
and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
Be not quick to anger,
for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.
Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
Wisdom is not wondering why things have all gone down hill. Anyone can say that and no one is wise by accident. It requires no insight to complain.
"Man is the wreckage of something great instead of the rising of something inferior." — Donald Grey Barnhouse
Mankind is admittedly a wreckage. He is not a wine maturing with age. He is milk getting worse everyday. He is a shadow of his former glory.
Wisdom is seeing God's handiwork in it all, however, and believing His promises in the midst of it. Wisdom sees that without Christ, chaos is inevitable, but it also knows that because of Christ, the chaos is now retreating. Sin is spiraling out of control, but the Spirit is building back better.
In Christ, a man can expect to be remodeled down to his studs just as he can expect the world to be subdued by Christ through His church. In Jesus, the man is remade as well as his surroundings. A new creation exists inside and out. He lives in a new world in as a new man.
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
A man made new must still combat the old man within as he must also fight the old world without, but to fight to return to the good ol' days won't fix anything -- first, because they weren't as good as he remembers, and second, because that is only rewinding the movie to the part you still liked. Without a new movie, it is going to end the same way, no matter to what previous scene you select. Lastly, we live in a world where a man has been raised from the dead. That has changed things. There is no setting the world back. We do not live in a post-Christian world because Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. as a resurrected man. There is no going back to the way things once were.
Philippians 1:6
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.
God completes what He puts in motion. He performs what He has promised. If you are a new creation, you will be completely recreated. The new earth on which we live will be made entirely new too.
Psalm 2:8
Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
The Father did not raise His Son from the dead in order to abandon His inheritance, nor has the Son forgotten to ask for it.
1 Corinthians 15:24-26
Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
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