“All Those Who Give Hope to the World”

The world is filled with strife and violence. Hope is in short supply. Who is able to provide real, lasting hope? Did you know you are part of that answer?

It seems like just about every day our newsfeeds are filled with violence and destruction at an ever-increasing rate. Anger, impatience and apathy have become almost instinctive actions in most of society. The ways of goodness and give seem unreachable. Pain seems to encompass us. Is there any hope at all?

At the close of a recent funeral I attended, a prayer was given that concluded with a reference to “all those who give hope to the world.”

Who are the hope-givers?

Who exactly are all those who really give hope to the world? Unbeknownst to this prayer-giver, those who are able to give real hope to our world aren’t people of great importance by human standards. They aren’t foreign dignitaries, governmental rulers or famous philanthropists renowned for their vast achievements.

These hope-givers are ordinary men and women who rub shoulders with the rest of society around them. They don’t look extraordinary—but they are in the process of learning how to assist the only One who can provide real, lasting hope. They will work alongside Christ and rule with Him as servants.

Those able to provide this hope are the people of God! Their primary function will be to serve a broken people with merciful love, bringing comfort to the sorely wounded people who survive the Great Tribulation.

The hopeless restored

In Ezekiel 37 God gave Ezekiel a vision of a valley filled with old, brittle bones. The prophecy poetically describes how muscle, sinew, flesh and blood will be miraculously added to them as God restores them to physical life! Still, the bones say in verse 11, “Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!”

These words not only represent the hopelessness many of those who will be in the second resurrection felt at the moment of death, but they also represent the hopelessness many feel today. How many throughout 6,000 years of human history have died without any hope for their future?

But these people are not without hope! Even though they don’t understand now and won’t understand immediately after they are resurrected, God reveals a great hope for these people: “Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up from your graves. I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land” (Ezekiel 37:13-14).

It is then, when the hostile heart is replaced with the obedient attitude of God’s Spirit, that the hopeless will find healing and comfort. They will begin to understand how they had been deceived by the enemy, Satan the devil (2 Corinthians 4:4). They will be met by those of us who were the firstfruits of God’s plan—who trained for this moment throughout our physical lives (the lives we are living now). We will be their teachers, their hope-givers, and we will be hidden no more (Isaiah 30:20).

Our incredible potential

Can we have any greater motivation now than this hope? We are being trained to assist in bringing God’s truth to a groaning creation (Romans 8:18-25). Keeping this purpose in our mind should give us a regular impetus to take our calling seriously.

Until then, there is much to be learned and much refining to be done to prepare for the time when the dead are given life again.

Will we be there for them?

Read more about these topics in the following Life, Hope & Truth articles:

• “Our Future Hope.”
• “Called and Chosen.”
• “Second Resurrection: A Second Chance?”