Hope is what keeps this messed up world turning.  If we didn't have hope, I dare say that not one of us would make it through the week, let alone our lives.  Hope is what keeps us going.

The big time Wall Street investor is hoping that each new day brings with it profits that will keep his clients coming back.  Even in times of economic downturn, such as we have today, hope is there to keep the fires of investment burning.

Even sports fans hold out hope against hope that their team will finally win the playoffs or take home the title, this year for sure.

The cancer patient who has been given the dim prognosis of only a 10% chance of survival, holds out hope that they might be in that 10% and will live to see their grandchildren grow up.

And the lost soul who realizes that they can go no lower and is reaching out of the pit of human tragedy toward an, as yet, unknown God, has hope that there is a better way.

Hope is a uniquely human thing, something that no other creature can experience.  We hold out hope for nearly everything that we experience, and that includes our spiritual experiences as well.

Even after our conversion from sinner to saint, we continue to hold out hope for those things which we cannot know for sure.  We hope that our loved ones have come to know Christ and have accepted His gift of eternal life.

We hope that the beliefs we hold dearly are sure and not in vain.  Hope is what keeps we Christians going.  The hope of eternal life.  The hope of being in the presence of God forever.  The hope of all pain and suffering as a thing of the past.

These are good hopes, solid hopes that we can be sure of, yet we continue to hope.   Is that wrong?  I don't think so because God wants us to look toward a future that is full of hopes and promises.

One of the interesting facts of our particular denomination is how we kept the old covenant festivals, but in a new way.  We all remember how, over the years, we heard sermon after sermon teaching us about how things would be in the new kingdom of God.

Especially, after the festival of Tabernacles was over, we remember the sermons which described this new kingdom, which we referred to as "The Wonderful World Tomorrow". 

We listened to sermon after sermon, over many years, explaining what that world would be like, and it gave us great hope.  We hoped for the eradication of disease and death.   We hoped for no more wars or strife.  And we hoped for our own special place in that kingdom.

One of the things that I remember well was the teaching that we would then be like God and have the ability to do things that, today, only God can do. 
But we were given hope of a new day when there would be millions, if not billions of Gods.

But was that, is that teaching sound biblical teaching?  Will we become God as God is God?  Can we look forward to a time when we will be equal to God?  Is Scripture giving us the right information here, or have we just misinterpreted it?

Christians are called the children of God, and children normally grow up to be like their parent(s). Does this mean that we will become God? What will our resurrected state be like?

These questions are understandably of great interest to us, especially in light of our previous teachings. The apostle John had something to say about these issues in his first epistle, chapter 2:28-3:2:

And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.

If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! 

The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.

But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

There are some interesting thoughts in this passage. First, John admits that what we will be like has not been revealed.

We can speculate about these matters, but we should admit that we really don’t know what we will be like nor what life will be like in the eternal kingdom of God.

We do know, of course, that we will be free of the trials and sorrows of this life (Revelation 21:1-5). That is certainly a wonderful insight.  And it gives us hope.

John also stated that we are "born again" now in this life, and that we are also called the "children of God." But we are still limited human beings. So, we can be children of God and be "born again" without being "Gods."

We have to be careful how we interpret such expressions in terms of what our nature and life might be like in the kingdom of God after the resurrection.

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. In the resurrection we will be "clothed" with an imperishable and immortal nature (1 Corinthians 15:52-53). We will be raised with a "spiritual body" (verse 44), which will be a state of existence provided to us by God.

Again, this tells us that we will be certainly different from our physical state, but this difference is not something we can explain or understand in this life.

This makes it doubly important that we be precise regarding our assumptions about the next life—and that we use terms as carefully as possible. For example, there is a big difference between "become God" and "become like God."

We may become "like" God in certain ways. God is spirit, and we shall have spiritual bodies, so we will be "like" God in a certain sense. In fact, we are already made in the "image and likeness" of God.

We are to exhibit the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which reflects the mind and nature of God’s love. Thus, we are to become "like God" in this way as well, even in this life.

But to believe that we shall "become God" contradicts the Bible’s teaching about the nature of God. God is one being, not many separate beings. God is eternal and uncreated. But we do not have a past eternity, and we were created by God.

Therefore, we are less than God, and can never be all that God is, and we can never be God, for that word implies eternalness, uncreatedness and omnipotence. We do not have life within ourselves, as does God.

We must be given life by God. He will give us eternal life, but that life is not inherent in us, and we cannot give it to others, as God can.

Some people use John 10:34—"you are gods"—in support of the idea that we shall become God. But Jesus was not commenting on the question of what we will be in the resurrection.

In this passage, we see Jesus quoting from Psalm 82:6, in which the Hebrew word translated "gods" is elohim. In context, it actually refers to unjust human judges (Psalm 82:1-2, 7). Jesus says the following in John 10:34-36:

Is it not written in your Law, "I have said you are gods." If he called them "gods" to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken—what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, "I am God’s Son"?

In John 10, the Jewish leaders were accusing Jesus of blasphemy because he had claimed "to be God" (verse 33). Jesus was saying, in effect, the following: "If Scripture can call unjust human judges "gods," how much more can the name ‘Son of God’ refer to me?"

Jesus was not telling the Jews that these unjust judges were literally Gods. That should be obvious. As the psalm says, they were mortal. Rather, Jesus was cautioning his hearers about their own unjust condemnation of his use of the term "Son of God."

Both the psalm and Jesus were talking about mortal human beings. The issue of our state after the resurrection has nothing to do with John 10:34.

In the resurrection, we will be like Jesus Christ, and that will be wonderful enough. What more could we, should we want?

Brethren, worry not about whether or not we were right in our old understanding in these things, that's not important.  What we need to remember is the important fact that God has called us out of this world and has promised His followers a greater joy than we could have ever hoped for.

He has promised us all eternal life, to be enjoyed while in His presence as spirit beings with no worries, no pain, no aging, no bills- what more could we ask for?  Nothing!!!

We will be God’s children forever, living in perfect joy and happiness, and we thank God that we can become his children even in this life, by being born again, of the Holy Spirit, through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.