Foundations of Biblical Worldview: Understanding Creation, Heaven, and the Hope of the Kingdom
For the next few lessons, we’ll be exploring: What does the Bible say about the end times? In other words, this is a series of studies on biblical eschatology—the study of the last days, the age to come, and the return of Jesus. These lessons are drawn from Joel Richardson’s study on the End of Days.
Now, when most people think about the end times, they think about topics like the Antichrist, the Great Tribulation, or the Mark of the Beast. And yes, those are important parts of the discussion. But biblical eschatology is much bigger than just the events that precede the return of Jesus. It also includes the return itself, the resurrection of the dead, and the kingdom that will be established after He comes. In short, it’s about the ultimate hope of the believer—what Scripture calls the good news of the kingdom.
The Bible devotes a tremendous amount of space to the last days. And yet, sadly, many Christians today are confused or uninformed about what it actually teaches. My goal in this course is to bring clarity to a subject that can sometimes feel controversial, confusing, or even frightening. We’ll approach it in a way that’s simple, understandable, and—most importantly—filled with hope. Because this really is the essence of our biblical hope: the return of Jesus, the resurrection, and the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth.
Now, before we dive into the details, I want to lay some solid foundations. The first two sessions will focus on biblical worldview. We’ve touched on this already in other modules, but it’s important enough to revisit. If we want to truly understand the end, we first need to understand the beginning. How does the Bible describe the world we live in? How is that different from the assumptions of our culture or from pagan influences that have crept into Christian thought over the centuries?
That’s why lesson one is titled: An Introduction to Biblical Worldview. We’ll start with Scripture itself. For example, Matthew 4:23 says:
“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” (Matthew 4:23)
Notice: Jesus wasn’t just preaching random good news—He was proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. That phrase is central. What does it mean? What exactly is this “good news of the kingdom”? Was the message of Jesus the same “gospel” we hear preached today? And if not, where have we drifted?
Matthew 24:14 says, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” That means the return of Jesus is directly connected to the world hearing this particular good news. So if we want to understand the end times, we must first understand the gospel of the kingdom as Jesus and the apostles preached it.
In these opening lessons, we’ll work to:
Identify the biblical good news of the kingdom.
Contrast it with the modern distortions of the gospel.
Expose and purge the ways pagan worldviews have influenced Western Christianity.
Only then can we clearly see the hope-filled picture Scripture paints of the future.
So let’s begin by looking at the foundation—the biblical worldview—because if we want to understand the end, we first need to return to the beginning.
When I say worldview—specifically, an introduction to biblical worldview—I mean, in the simplest terms, what we believe about the nature of God’s creation. And I should add that we’ll be approaching Scripture through a Jewish biblical worldview. In other words, how did the people of Israel—the very ones who wrote the Scriptures—understand and interpret the world around them? We begin with the conviction that God created everything. Hopefully, we all agree on that. If not, then accepting the biblical worldview presented by Israel’s Scriptures may prove difficult. But what does the Bible actually say about the nature of the world we live in? A worldview is essentially our understanding of the totality of existence—everything that is. And the question is: how does Scripture define it?
Now, when I use the word eschatology—that’s just the study of the end times, the eschaton, ultimate things. The simplest definition is this: eschatology is the study of the last days, the return of Jesus, and the age to come.
Broadly speaking, we can think of eschatology in three categories:
The events that precede the return of Jesus.
The return of Jesus itself.
The events that follow His return—the age to come.
The Bible calls our present era “this age.” But it also speaks of “the age to come.” The return of Jesus is the defining event that separates the two.
So why begin with worldview? Because worldview shapes eschatology. What we believe about the world now profoundly influences what we believe about where everything is headed—about ultimate things. And here’s what’s really important: our eschatology, in turn, shapes our gospel.
“Worldview shapes eschatology, and eschatology shapes how we understand the gospel.”
Think about it. The message of hope we proclaim—the “good news”—is rooted in what we believe about the future. When we tell people about salvation, about eternal life, about the promises of God—we’re drawing from our eschatology.
For example, if we believe the ultimate hope is simply to die and go to heaven forever as disembodied spirits, then that becomes our gospel. But if we believe God is going to restore all things—renew the earth, resurrect the dead, and establish His kingdom—then that is our gospel. Those are two very different visions of hope, and they produce two very different messages.
This is why clarity matters. An unbiblical worldview leads to an unbiblical eschatology. An unbiblical eschatology leads to an unbiblical gospel. And an unbiblical gospel leads to an unbiblical mission. In other words, if our worldview is corrupted, then both the message we proclaim and the mission we pursue will be distorted.
Sadly, throughout church history, this has often been the case. Many Christians—sometimes entire movements—have embraced eschatologies influenced not only by the Bible, but by pagan or philosophical ideas from outside of Scripture. This has left the church with a mixed and often confused message. And scholars across the evangelical world would agree: the church has at times absorbed unbiblical worldviews that have reshaped its hope, its gospel, and its mission. A cursory study of the first century after the death of the Messiah shows that early followers of Jesus—especially as Gentiles began joining the movement—were deeply challenged by the influence of pagan culture and the prevailing Greek and Roman ideologies.
But Scripture gives us clarity. Take John 3:16, for example—a verse nearly everyone knows: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” That is true. It’s foundational. But if we ask most Christians today, “What is the gospel?” many would essentially stop there. They would quote John 3:16, or paraphrase it: believe in Jesus, and you will have eternal life.
That is absolutely true. But it is also a radically abbreviated, minimal version of the gospel. The good news is so much bigger, so much richer, than just one verse. John 3:16 is one component of a much larger story—a story of creation, fall, redemption, resurrection, and restoration.
Unfortunately, many Christian traditions have focused on one or two aspects of that story while neglecting the others. But we want to be people who embrace, proclaim, and live the whole story. To do that, we need to understand each essential component of the biblical narrative. And that’s why we begin, just as the Bible itself begins, with the story of creation. Because if we want to understand redemption, if we want to understand the end, we first need to understand the beginning.
An Overview of the Redemption Story
The Bible devotes a tremendous amount of space to telling the story of creation. But immediately after creation, the next primary component of the biblical story is the Fall.
Now, most Christians think of “the Fall” as only the rebellion of Adam and Eve—when they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and sin entered the world. And yes, that is a huge part of the story. But Scripture tells us the Fall is bigger than that.
There is also the rebellion of Satan, the anointed cherub, a powerful angel who turned against God. His rebellion deeply impacted creation. Then, in Genesis 6, we read of the fall of the watchers—the “sons of God,” powerful heavenly beings who rebelled by taking human wives and producing the Nephilim. In other words, corruption entered creation not only through humanity’s rebellion on earth, but also through rebellion in the heavenly realm.
So the Fall has multiple layers: the fall of mankind, the fall of Satan, and the fall of the watchers. These explain why the world is so broken, why corruption and chaos permeate creation.
The next major component of the story is the promised plan of redemption. God’s answer to the Fall was His promises—what the Bible calls covenants. Sadly, this is one of the most neglected parts of the story. Many Christians know a little about the New Covenant but are unfamiliar with the Abrahamic, Mosaic (or Sinaitic), and Davidic covenants. Yet each one is essential to God’s redemptive plan.
At the center of the New Covenant, of course, is Jesus. God stepped into creation, took on flesh through the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary, and revealed Himself to the world in the person of His Son. Jesus is the self-revelation of God. John 3:16 captures the heart of this: God gave His Son to suffer, die, and rise again so that we might be forgiven, redeemed, and delivered from the curse of the Fall.
But the story doesn’t end at the cross. After His resurrection, Jesus ascended and sent the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is our down payment, our guarantee of what’s to come—the resurrection of the dead and the age of immortality. Today, the Spirit empowers us, comforts us, equips us with gifts, and gives us a foretaste of the age to come.
The next great event is the Day of the Lord—the day of judgment, the return of Jesus. This is the decisive moment that divides this present age from the age to come. The entire Bible points forward to this climactic day.
And finally, we arrive at the age to come—the kingdom of God, the restoration of all things. It will be like the Garden of Eden restored, yet far greater. This is the ultimate hope of Scripture: the renewal of all creation under the reign of Messiah.
To help us visualize this, Joel Richardson created a timeline. The Bible tells its story in the shape of a timeline—it begins at a point in history, moves through promises and covenants, points forward to the cross and resurrection, and looks ahead to the return of Jesus and the restoration of all things. Unlike pagan worldviews that see time as cyclical, Scripture is linear. It has a beginning and is moving toward a clear and glorious end.
So when we proclaim the gospel, we must not stop at the cross. The cross is central, but the good news stretches from creation to new creation. It is the whole story of God’s redemption, fulfilled in Jesus and culminating in His return and the age to come.
We certainly want to talk about the cross, but our message cannot stop there. We need to proclaim the entire story of redemption—every component of it. This is what it means to have a full gospel. Good news that includes the whole story, not just one isolated part. Unfortunately, much of the church today only focuses on a fragment of the message. But we are called to proclaim the entire biblical story of redemption. So, for the rest of this lesson, we’ll begin where the Bible begins: with creation—the letter “C” on our timeline.
Defining Our Worldview of Creation
This brings us to the question of worldview. Worldview asks: What is the world we live in? What is the totality of existence? What makes up everything that exists, and what does the Bible say about it?
Getting worldview right is absolutely essential. Our worldview determines our theology, and our theology shapes how we live—our actions, our mission, and our message. Without a biblical worldview, we cannot properly understand the story we’re in. Asking a Christian with an unbiblical worldview to live faithfully is like putting a soccer team on a basketball court and telling them to score—they’ll be completely confused because they don’t even know the rules of the game. To play faithfully, we need to understand the field we’re on and the rules that govern it.
But here’s the challenge: defining our worldview is not easy. We’re like fish in a bowl, trying to describe the universe beyond the glass. Our perspective is limited by what we can see and experience. Left to ourselves, every person will form a different explanation of reality.
That’s why, as Christians, our worldview must not be built solely on our observations, but on revelation. We are stewards of the book God gave us—the Scriptures, His Word. Yes, we trust our senses—creation testifies to its Maker—but our ultimate authority is what God Himself has revealed.
The Bible begins with the foundation of worldview in its very first verse:
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
That simple statement frames all of existence. Apart from God, there are two categories: the heavens (plural) and the earth (singular). Scripture repeats this pattern again and again. Isaiah 44:24 declares:
“I am the Lord, the Maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself and spreading out the earth all alone.”
The heavens and the earth—that’s the biblical definition of all that exists.
The New Testament affirms this as well. John 1:3 tells us:
“Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.”
Paul echoes this in Colossians 1:16–17:
“For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.”
So the testimony of Scripture is clear: there is God, and there is His creation—the heavens and the earth, visible and invisible. All of it exists by Him, through Him, and for Him. And this is where the biblical worldview begins.
The Bible consistently describes the heavens as above and the earth as below. No matter where you stand on earth, the heavens are always “up”—beyond us—and the earth is always “down.” This orientation appears throughout Scripture.
Deuteronomy 4:39 declares:
“Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.”
God is Lord of the heavens above and the earth below. Likewise, Genesis 11:5 says, “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower.” Genesis 18:21 echoes the same language: “I will go down now and see if they have done according to the outcry.”
When the Lord comes to earth, He comes down. When humanity reaches for heaven, they go up. The orientation—up and down—is consistent from Genesis through Revelation.
Now, is heaven simply another dimension? We don’t know. Scripture uses language we can understand, but we don’t fully grasp the “physics” of it. The heavens are as real as the earth—just beyond our natural reach. The Bible describes angels coming down from heaven to earth, and at times people (like Enoch, Elijah, and Paul in 2 Corinthians 12) being taken up into heaven.
Exodus 19 illustrates this vividly: the Lord told Moses to consecrate the people, “for on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.” And in Acts 1, Jesus Himself physically ascended before the disciples’ eyes into the clouds, taken up into heaven. The angels promised He would return in the same way—coming down from heaven.
Paul even speaks of being caught up to the “third heaven” (2 Corinthians 12:2), suggesting multiple layers of heaven. This is why the Bible uses “heavens” in the plural.
So, if we were to diagram it:
The totality of existence (everything apart from God) can be pictured as a great sphere.
Within it are the heavens above and the earth below.
Scripture speaks of at least three heavens, and at the very height of them dwells God Himself. *Note: Some Jewish apocalyptic literature (e.g., 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, Testament of Levi) describes seven heavens or even ten layers. These were influential in Second Temple Jewish thought, but Scripture itself never gives that detailed a system.
Job 22:12 asks, “Is not God in the height of heaven?” Psalm 102:19 says, “The Lord looked down from His sanctuary on high, from heaven He viewed the earth.”
What’s remarkable is this: though God created the heavens and the earth, He chose to dwell within His creation. Isaiah 40:22 says, “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth… He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.”
This is easy to miss. Many people claim God lives “outside” creation, outside time and space. But the Bible reveals the opposite: God dwells within the very creation He made. He has chosen to live close to us.
This stands in stark contrast to other conceptions of God—for example, in Islam, where God is entirely distant, unreachable, and unknowable. Scripture affirms God’s greatness and transcendence, but also insists He is the self-revealing God, who draws near. He chose to dwell within creation, to reveal Himself to His people, and ultimately to come down in the flesh in Jesus.
Even before the incarnation, He appeared throughout Scripture—the angel of the Lord, the glory of the Lord, God walking with His people. From the very beginning, His nature has been to reveal Himself, to condescend, to dwell near us.
This is the antidote to what we might call cosmic loneliness. We are not abandoned in the vastness of creation. The God who made all things has chosen to be present with us, within His creation, drawing near to reveal Himself. That is His character. That is His heart.
So to summarize:
The totality of existence is the heavens and the earth.
Within that sphere live humans, animals, angels, demons, and every created thing.
God Himself has chosen to dwell “at the height of the heavens,” yet close to His creation.
He is not a distant God, but the self-revealing God who desires relationship.
And that brings us to the end of our introduction to Biblical Worldview. In the next lesson, we’ll build on this foundation and explore how worldview directly shapes our understanding of the gospel—and how pagan influences have distorted it.