They will see His face (Rev. 22:4).
As the Scripture sets before believers our enduring hope, the saints hear of the day when we shall see “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Specifically, when Christ appears, “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). John Owen once asked, “To whom is it not a matter of rejoicing, that with the same eyes with which they see the tokens and signs of him in the sacrament of the supper, they shall behold himself immediately in his own person?” He then adds “in the immediate beholding of the person of Christ, we shall see a glory in it a thousand times above what we can here conceive.”
Believers have been longing for such a sight (Job 19:26), yearning to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord (Ps. 27:4). And while we have some faint acquaintance with Christ’s glory now by faith, a total transformation in us, changed from perishable to imperishable (1 Cor. 15:51–52), is necessary to see His unveiled glory. It is when we are like Him that we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). Thus, the day will come when the obstacle to our glorified seeing, the darkness of our sin, the weakness of our frame, shall be removed. Then there will be no hindrance to beholding His glory. This sight is, as Jonathan Edwards said, “the chief bliss of heaven.” And what will such a sight produce in believers? What shall be some of the blessings of beholding the Lord?
It will produce at least five things. First, the sight will produce joy. In Psalm 16, David writes, “In your presence there is fullness of joy [literally “joys”—it is so abundant this joy cannot be spoken of in the singular]; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11). The believer shall never have a languishing, sorrowful soul or a miserable body again. There will be no more drooping heads in present hardships. All trouble will be gone, and that will thrill our souls. However, the greatest joy will be found in uninterrupted communion with the Lord. We shall truly rejoice in Him. Sin will no longer darken our appreciation of His person and works. Thus, we will delight in our God like never before.
Second, this sight will produce satisfaction. During our days on earth, we found Solomon’s testimony to be true. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing” (Eccl. 1:8). We grow weary with everything. We crave novelty and variety. That craving gets us in trouble because, at times, we tire even of God’s good gifts due to our inward corruption. Nothing fills the restlessness in us. And while Augustine was right to say, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee,” even as believers we cannot sustain focus upon our Lord. We grow dissatisfied and distracted because of sin. But that is not how it will be in glory.
In Psalm 17, David is praying for deliverance from the wicked and their violence. He then contrasts his hope with that of worldlings “whose portion is in this life” (Ps. 17:14). Their belly is filled with treasure. They are satisfied with children and leaving their abundance to their infants. But not David. He wants more than what this cursed world, even in its blessings, can offer.
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As Christians have been pointing out for more than 2,000 years, the reason Jesus never mentioned homosexuality is that his views on sexuality were already so clear that it wasn’t necessary…serious-minded people didn’t argue that Jesus would endorse homosexual relationships, much less same-sex marriage.
“Some words, like strategic castles, are worth defending, and evangelical is among them,” Michael Gerson wrote. “While the term is notoriously difficult to define, it certainly encompasses a ‘born-again’ religious experience, a commitment to the authority of the Bible, and an emphasis on the redemptive power of Jesus Christ.”
Gerson wrote those words in an article for The Atlantic in 2018. He ends his essay by saying, “This sets an urgent task for evangelicals: to rescue their faith from its worst leaders.”
Gerson, who previously served as a top aide and speechwriter for George W. Bush and is the author of Heroic Conservatism and coauthor of City of Man (a book edited by Collin Hansen and Tim Keller), has been an evangelical voice in the public square. It’s unfortunate, then, that he now uses arguments about sexuality that contradict Scripture and the church’s historic witness. As he notes, being an evangelical means being committed to the Bible’s authority—a position he seems to have now abandoned.
Has the LGBT+ Movement Harmed Anyone?
During Pride Month, Gerson used his forum in The Washington Post to write about “how the gay rights movement found such stunning success.” The article’s key thesis is that “in the conflict over gay rights, supporters have asserted a compelling view of human dignity, while opponents have struggled to explain how broadening rights harms others.” To support his claim, Gerson provides three examples.
For his first example, Gerson writes, “Some conservatives claimed that gay marriage would somehow weaken the institution of straight marriage. But the evidence that same-sex marriage increases rates of divorce, child poverty or children living in single-parent homes appears nonexistent.” His criteria reveals that he never truly understood the argument for how heterosexual marriages would be weakened by same-sex marriage.
Consider, for example, the issue of the redefinition of marriage. For almost all of human history, marriage has been considered the comprehensive union of man and woman that unites them for the purposes of procreation, family life, and domestic sharing. By simply redefining the term, it automatically devalued the institution.
If Gerson is looking for a more direct harm, he could look at the rise of nonmonogamous relationships. As I wrote nine years ago, being “monogamish” (i.e., when a couple is emotionally intimate only with each other yet engages in sexual infidelities or group sexual activity) has long been considered acceptable, even normative, within homosexual communities. As our nation embraces the acceptance of same-sex marriage, the idea that fidelity isn’t required within marriage has also been increasingly accepted.
A poll taken in 2021 found that the generation of adults most influenced by LGBT+ culture is adopting this view of fidelity. Four in 10 millennials (41 percent) said they’d be interested in having an open relationship. Among millennials who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or other, 52 percent would be interested in open relationships. Among married couples from every generation, 30 percent of husbands would be interested, while fewer wives (21 percent) feel similarly.
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Written by G. K. Beale |
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
The New Testament understands the land promise as a promise that Israel’s land would be expanded to encompass the entire world. For example, Romans 4:13 says, “For the promise to Abraham or to his seed that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law . . .” (so also Heb. 11:8–16; Matt. 5:5 in allusion to Ps. 37:11). The land promises will be fulfilled in a physical form when all believers inherit the earth, but the inauguration of this fulfillment is mainly spiritual until the final consummation in a fully physical new heaven and earth. The physical way these land promises have begun fulfillment is that Christ himself introduced the new creation by his physical resurrection. In this connection, the Abrahamic promises concerning the land are promises to his “seed,” referring ultimately to Christ (Gal. 3:16) and those in union with him (v. 29). 

Editors’ note: “To your offspring I will give this land.” This divine pledge to Abraham in Genesis 12:7 introduces the profound bond between the land of Israel and the narrative of the people who dwell in it. This theme of the land promises, as enduring as it is controversial, extends from biblical history to modern geopolitics. On the one-month anniversary of the war between Hamas and Israel, we asked three senior evangelical statesmen—G. K. Beale, Darrell Bock, and Gerald McDermott—to explain the depths of this biblical relationship between Israel and the land and to consider whether it continues to be relevant to the church in our time. Read the other entries: Darrell Bock | Gerald McDermott

Abstract: In this essay, G. K. Beale explores the Old Testament land promises to Israel, examining the idea that the promises were intended to expand beyond the initial borders to encompass the whole earth. He discusses the evolution of the land promise from a specific location in Canaan to a worldwide scope, alluding to the eschatological expansion of Israel’s borders as part of God’s predestined plan. Beale argues that in this age the promises have begun to be fulfilled spiritually in Christ and will be consummated physically in the new creation, proposing a two-stage “installment fulfillment.” He concludes that contemporary events in Israel do not represent the fulfillment of these Old Testament promises, but rather that in Christ and through the church, the expansion of Eden will be realized universally.

The inception of a land promise begins in Genesis 1–2. I’ve argued in my book The Temple and the Church’s Mission that Eden was a garden sanctuary and Adam was its high priest. Temples in the ancient world had images of the god of the temple placed in them. Adam was that image, placed in the Eden temple. His task was to “fill the earth” with God’s glory as a divine image-bearer along with his progeny as image-bearers (this seems to be the implication of Gen. 1:26–28).
Thus, he was to expand the borders of Eden, the place of God’s presence. Adam and his progeny were to expand Eden’s borders until they circumscribed the earth so God’s glory would thus be reflected throughout the whole world through his image-bearers.
Corporate Adam Expands the Place of God’s Presence
The commission to Adam and Eve to multiply their offspring and to rule, subdue, and “fill the earth” was passed on to Noah and then repeatedly to the patriarchs and Israel. Consequently, the mantle of Adam’s responsibility was placed on Abraham and his seed, Israel; they were considered to be a “corporate Adam.” The nation was designed to represent true humanity. Starting with the patriarchs, the commission was mixed with a promise that it would be fulfilled at some point in a “seed,” but Israel failed to carry out the commission. Thus, the promise was continually made that an eschatological time would come when this commission would be carried out in Israel.
That part of the commission to expand Eden to cover the whole earth also continued, but now Israel’s land became conceived of as Israel’s Eden (as it’s called at several points in the Old Testament: Gen. 13:10; Isa. 51:3; Ezek. 36:35; Joel 2:3). This description of Israel’s land being like Eden was enhanced by the repeated descriptions of the “land flowing with milk and honey” and luscious fruit (e.g., Num. 13:26–27; Deut. 1:25; Neh. 9:25).
The key to understanding why Israel was to expand the borders of its land to cover the earth rests in the fact that Israel was a corporate Adam, and just as he was to expand the borders of Eden, so Israel was to do the same. In particular, Eden wasn’t a mere piece of land but was the first tabernacle (the place of divine presence), which Adam was to expand.
Likewise, Israel’s land was to expand because at its center in Jerusalem was the temple, in which was the holy of holies, where God’s presence dwelled. I discussed in chapter 19 of my book A New Testament Biblical Theology that Israel’s temple symbolized the unseen and seen heavens (respectively the inner sanctuary and the holy place) and the earth (the courtyard).
The purpose of the symbolism was to point to the end time, when God’s special revelatory presence would break out of the holy of holies and fill the visible heavens and the earth. Accordingly, there are prophecies that describe how God’s presence will break out from the holy of holies, cover Jerusalem (Isa. 4:4–6; Jer. 3:16–17; Zech. 1:16–2:11), then expand to cover all of Israel’s land (Ezek. 37:25–28), and finally cover the entire earth (Isa. 54:2–3; Dan. 2:34–35, 44–45).
Strikingly, the passages from Jeremiah 3, Isaiah 54, and Daniel 2 make explicit allusions either back to the patriarchal promises or to Genesis 1:28 when discussing the expansion of the land. From the perspective of the Old Testament writers, it’s difficult to know whether this complete expansion was envisioned to occur through military means or through other, more peaceful ways (e.g., through the nations voluntarily bowing to Israel and its God).
We know, at least, that Israel was to expand its beginning possession of the promised land through military means (Deut. 9:1; 11:23; 12:29; 18:14). Yet other texts foresee a more peaceful means in the eschaton whereby the nations throughout the earth become subject to Israel (Amos 9:11–12; Isa. 2:3–4; 11:10–12), with the possible implication of Israel possessing their lands.
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