Chapter 10 Summary: The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard

The Restoration of All Things

The story is told of a mountain climber who was caught in a terrible snow storm that would not let up. He was dangling by his rope unable to see what was above him or below him. After a while he prayed that God would help him, for it was the only way he could be rescued from this condition. He heard a voice say, "Let go." Believing he was becoming suicidal he determined to hold on for dear life in hopes that the storm would die down.

After several hours the storm did not end, and the climber unfortunately froze to death tethered to this rope. Days later a search party came and found his body dangling 2 feet off the ground, frozen to death. He perished because he could not see the ground beneath his feet, and thus a way forward. 

This is the condition several people find themselves in. They are disappointed with how their lives have turned out. "Sometimes," as Willard suggests, "it is simply a matter of how they experience aging, which they take to mean they no longer have a future. But often, due to circumstances or wrongful decisions and actions by others, what they had hoped to accomplish in life they did not." So they experience life as "dangling on the rope." Nowhere meaningful to go, nothing meaningful to do—perishing. This is not the abundance of which Jesus speaks.

It is vital, therefore, that the student of Jesus has a vision of the future; better yet, that they share his vision of the future. And not just any obscure vision, "it must be something we can now plan or make decisions in terms of, with clarity and joyful anticipation. In this way our future can be incorporated into our life now and our life now can be incorporated into our future."

This is what Dallas Willard sets out to do in the final chapter of The Divine Conspiracy.* He paints a picture of what that future life, the one in the fully realized kingdom of God, might be like. Thus far he has reclaimed a vision of the gospel that presents God as being highly invested in our present lives. As Willard often says, “the intention of God is that we should each become the kind of person whom he can set free in his universe, empowered to do what we want to do.”

But more on this later; before we even get to wondering how we will be employed there we must answer the preliminary question; “is it truly reasonable to think that we will continue beyond the demise of our bodies?”

This is the question for many who struggle with belief in an "after-life." They suggest that it goes against the laws of nature. This, of course, is not true. There is no law that suggests such a thing; how could there be? But the answer to the question, as should be clear at this point in the book, depends on ones view of God.

The God and Father of Jesus Christ who is, as we learned in Chapter 3, the most joyous being in the entire universe will certainly not let us become nonexistent. He has, says Willard, "made a great, often terrifying, investment in individual human beings… And he is not about to lose the result by permitting human beings to cease to exist. 'He shall see the travail of his soul and be satisfied'" (Isa. 53:10-11).

Our existence, both in heaven or “the other place,” continues only because of the mercy and love of God (more on the latter later). But how can we know that we will pass through the death of our physical bodies and “survive?” Again the answer is in the God of Jesus. "His own being proves that personal existence is not, as such, dependent upon matter. Instead matter depends on him. He undoubtedly has the very highest quality of consciousness—and all this without a brain!"

That, by the way, is my favorite line in the whole book. We serve a brainless God! Unlike humans, he doesn't depend on brain and body, they depend on him. “And in him our own personal being will be as secure without body and brain as it now is with body and brain. This is our confidence. The God of Jesus will obviously preserve the human personality within the eternality of his own life… Not because of us, once again, but because of God.”

But what will our future life be like?

Well, upon passing through death all things that we know will become known fully by us, even as we are known fully by the divine (1 Cor. 13:12). There nothing is hidden (Luke 8:17), but all is seen with clarity. Willard intentionally speaks of “passing through death” to echo Jesus' teaching that his students will “never die” (John 11:26). Our present lives will simply transition to something glorious beyond measure. "Our experience will be much clearer, richer, and deeper, of course, because it will be unrestrained by the limitations now imposed upon us by our dependence upon our body."

Our new spiritual bodies will be like Christ’s post resurrection body which “was not restrained by space, time and physical causality in the manner of physical bodies… He will metamorphose our humiliating body, transforming it into a glory body like his, utilizing the power he has to make all things do what he wants” (Phil 3:20-21). In other words, the temporal part of our lives will be swallowed up by that which is eternal, and thus we shall ever be with the Lord.

In the meantime, as students of Jesus, we should continue growing steadily in our ability to draw our livelihood from the kingdom of heaven, and its King. Our lives should be marked by a constant and steady movement towards transformation into Christlikeness. We should, as it were, begin living in heaven now. Why wait until we die?

As we look towards the time of our transition we should do so with confidence that the God who did not abandon us in this world, but joined us, will also meet us as we enter his fully realized kingdom. This is, and always will be, because God is good. The goodness of God guarantees the existence of every single human who has ever existed; even those who choose to dwell apart from him in a place many call hell. Think not of fires and pitchforks, it is simply a chosen life apart from God. As Willard suggests:

"Perhaps, by contrast, we must say that those who do not now enter the eternal life of God through confidence in Jesus will experience separation, isolation, and the end of their hopes. Perhaps this will be permitted in their case because they have chosen to be God themselves, to be their own ultimate point of reference. God permits it, but that posture obviously can only be sustained at a distance from God. The fires of heaven, we might suspect, are hotter than the fires of hell. Still, there is room in the universe for them."

Yes, even those who do not want to live in the reality of God will be permitted to do so because of God's goodness. He has never overridden a person's free will, and he will not begin at eternity. CS Lewis said,

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened."

Those of us who joyfully say "Thy will be done" should expect to reign with Jesus for eternity. As in the parable of the servant who was faithful over little, we should expect to be given rule over much (Matthew 25:21). For God's universe is too vast to comprehend; "there are about ten thousand million galaxies in 'our' physical system, with one hundred billion billion planets. That is, 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets. And it may be that the physical system we know of is but one of many that we have not yet discovered."

This amazing quote should indicate to us the joy that God has in store for us. Not simply lounging on a cloud, and certainly not an eternal church service (although I know several preachers who have sermons for such a service; myself included); but joining the creativity of the Trinity, and living forever in abundant joy and peace, pervaded with agape.

This is our hope. This is our future. This is the life to which we have been called.

I will end this summary as Willard ends his book.

“Those who overcome will be welcomed to sit with me on my throne, as I too overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. Those capable of hearing should listen to what the Spirit is saying to my people.” — Jesus, Rev. 3:21– 22)

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