God created man in His image so that man can have a special relationship with Him. Man is His greatest interest on the earth, but the earth itself is a great interest of His, too. We are even told in Revelation 11:18 that He will “destroy those who destroy the earth.”

      The first commandment to the first man was to cultivate and keep, or watch over, the garden where God had put him. Cultivating is much more than just sowing seed and waiting for a crop. It is preparing the land, sowing at the proper time, then keeping the weeds from choking the seeds and birds from eating them. It takes a lot of work and a lot of watching. Never has God rescinded this responsibility from man. That doesn’t mean we’re all supposed to be farmers, but it does imply that He planted something in man’s nature to take care of this earth. This should be reflected in all of us.

      Scholars have estimated that between one third and one half of the teachings on righteousness in Scripture are about stewardship—how well we take care of what has been entrusted to us. The way we honor and take care of a gift will be construed as the way we honor the giver of the gift. God sees the way we treat the earth as a reflection of the care and respect we have for Him.

      Therefore, every Christian should be an environmentalist. That idea is likely scary to some, since the environmental movement has become so radical and extreme. However, if Christians had become involved in this movement, it would not likely have become so radical and extreme. Christians are called to be “salt and light” to keep such things from happening. We also should acknowledge that Christians have taken many doctrines to extremes and turned many people off from following the Lord. However, the way we should respond to both of these extremes is not to abandon them, but to find the uncorrupted truth at the core of them, recover the truth, and seek to keep the extremists from hijacking them again.

      The book of Revelation is a “revealing” of the path man has been on—why and how much we have been corrupted—and why we so desperately need Christ, our Redeemer. The antichrist is a personification of what we would all be like without Christ. The antichrist is an example of the total depravity of man, manifested to show the world for all time where we will always end up if we try to run this world without God. It is also where we will personally end up if we try to run our lives without God.

      The Revelation journey is concluded in a most wonderful restoration of mankind and the entire earth so that it will ultimately be the dwelling place of God Himself. We can read the end of the story and see that the history of mankind and the earth will have more than a good ending; it will be perfect! It will be as glorious as the nature of the God we serve.

      When we were born again, we did not instantly become mature in Christ or perfect in nature. It takes a process of having our minds renewed and being steadfastly delivered from our corrupted nature. How much time it takes depends a lot on our devotion to the process. In Revelation 3:20, the Lord is standing at the door of His own church knocking to see if anyone will let Him into it. This is a revelation that in this age He will not go anywhere—even into His own church—if He is not wanted. In the next age, He will rule with a rod of iron to discipline the wayward, but it will still take a thousand years to fully restore mankind and the earth.

      This leads to our need to understand all the ways He knocks and seeks to come into our lives, our works, and even churches built in His name. The book of Revelation is most basically a revelation of Jesus Christ, but it is also a revelation of a false church, the true church, and the conflict between them. One of these churches seeks to have us married to the spirit of the world, and one is seeking to be a pure, chaste bride waiting for her Bridegroom, the Lord. This church is the New Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven, not up from the earth, or the earthly.

      The bride nature of the true church will take on the Lord’s heart for all of His purposes, especially the restoration of mankind from all of the consequences of the fall. This also includes the restoration of the earth from all of the consequences of man’s fallen nature in our stewardship of the earth.