From Jesus Christ we get a prayer called the Lord’s Prayer. It is an anchor for many for a daily life of faith in God. Here it shows we can rely on God to be the one power who will not end, even though all powers in the world fade and end, as also the gods of nations faded in the past, and some remaining will fade in future. In the teachings of Jesus he highlighted a psalm, Psalm 82, which tells of the divine counsel of sons of God in heaven presided over by the Father. The psalm tells how these sons of God will fade eventually. Jesus preached to try to save us from that fate. Jesus in the Book of Revelation is seen as remaining faithful to God and archangels and heavenly elders staying faithful like Jesus, and increasingly more and more humans like Jesus staying faithful to him, who will reign beside him, even as he reigns beside the Father perpetually. This is all reflected (and by some, daily voiced) in that Lord’s Prayer, in which the faithful humans are spoken of as family having God as Father, and this Father having the kingdom forever and ever. So we see in this two futures. There is a future in which someone can fade because of unjust living, especially seen in their injustice to the poor. This is described by Jesus as dying in one’s sins. Then there is a future where this waning is averted. This is described by Jesus as eternal life. He came to bring what is needed to have this second future, and taught what must happen for it to be attained. First there has to be a change of any behaviour that leads to that first waning future. He spoke (John chapter 8) of belief in him being a first step, and then of another ongoing step of holding to his teachings, to make the person his disciple. Then there is a transformation coming from the resulting knowledge of truth, freeing from the bad behaviour patterns. This is described as rebirth, reforming the person by spirit, not merely by biology and the world. The bad behaviour, even if seen in a godlike being, even if they are called a son of God (Psalm 82), means they are so unlike God Himself, the Most High Father Himself, that they end up with the hopeless waning future that results. Jesus exemplifies the more hopeful behaviour, which he came to bring about in those who believe, which results in being truly those the Father is pleased to call His children, who the Father loves enough to provide them with Jesus to enable them to have the eternal hope of carrying on forever without that dismal waning end. In the end, we are shown in Revelation, there will remain the faithful many, who did not wane, but who carried on to be forever there with the Father, when all the badly behaved and hopeless have been cast outside of that final circle, that city of light. So Jesus brought what might seem a terrible, and at the same time for some, hopeful, division. With it, however, he gives grace to reach for the better future rather than be weighed down with ongoing despair of what would happen otherwise if we fail to ever believe. God says “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”
