All Things New: Rediscovering the Four-Chapter Gospel

Description

If you’ve read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or seen the movie based on it, you’re almost sure to remember the scene near the end when, the ring having been destroyed at Mount Doom and the eagles having rescued Sam and Frodo, Sam wakes and is surprised to see Gandalf. “Gandalf!” he gasps. “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?”

Living in today’s world with terrorism, the breakdown of morals that stood us in good staid for centuries, rampant environmental problems, educational systems that seem more designed to undermine Christian faith and practice than to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, and many other problems can be more than a little discouraging.

But the good news of God’s work in this world through His Son Jesus Christ is that all of these things and more are being undone, and just as, in fiction, Frodo and Sam played their part, so, in the real world, all of us can have a part in turning things around.

We can contribute to the granting of our prayer, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”!

How?

In his book All Things New: Rediscovering the Four-Chapter Gospel, my good friend Hugh Whelchel, Executive Director of the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics and former President of Reformed Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, tells us, in very practical terms rooted in solid Biblical theology.

Hugh points out that it’s common for people to see salvation history—the story of God’s work in and for humanity and the rest of creation—in three “chapters”: creation, fall, and redemption. But he shows that that’s a truncated view, and that there’s a fourth chapter: restoration.

In that “fourth chapter,” God call His redeemed people to work lovingly together toward societal and global transformation. Will that lead to utopia? Certainly not, but we have every reason to believe, from Christ’s own teaching, that it can lead to a world far better than what it was a two thousand years ago, one thousand years ago, even one year ago.

This short book includes questions at the end of each chapter that make it ideal for personal reflection and group discussion. The short time it takes to read it will be tremendously encouraging and life changing.