Main news for 24 March 2004

Several centuries before Christ's first coming into the world, the prophet Isaiah is allowed a glimpse of God's design for the end of time. The world we know, created by God, is still not final; it does not yet correspond to the Creator's words "very good," which we read at the beginning of Genesis. Indeed, Creation is distorted by the fall, distorted so that "the whole creation groans and labors together" (Rom. 8:22); but we cannot imagine any other world. Throughout all human history God intervenes in its course, finding people who respond to His call and bring God's righteousness into this life sunk in sin. This already is new Creation, because the world is being changed by God and will be changed. The Lord reveals to the prophet that a day will come when the glory of God will triumph, when the whole world will be transformed by the love of the Almighty. And for us this world will be new and infinitely beautiful. Almost the same words will be repeated at the very end of the book of Revelation (Rev. 21:1) with the addition: "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5), and this means that after God's final victory over evil, when this world passes away and time ends, God will bring forth something new that cannot even be described. Only one thing can be said about this future world: there God and the human being will be together.