Thanks, PastorPete. I don’t think you are missing the point - at least, your views seem similar to mine, so you can’t be missing the point!

However, I don’t think I would take it as pessimistic because we are involved in struggle against ‘the powers’; rather, I would take it as pessimistic if we were led to believe we would not prevail against ‘the powers’ on this earth, this side of ‘new heaven and new earth’.

I would also especially take it as pessimistic if all we could look forward to was a future, at some distant stage, when despite the promises that the ‘church’ would ‘prevail’ against ‘the gates of hell’, the final image is of Jerusalem (the new one, I suppose) being besieged by an overwhelming force of opponents, and only being rescued by fire from heaven. This would lead me to ask, why bother with anything now? And it would reinforce a view of the church’s mission as sending out lifeboats to rescue people out of the world, rather than bringing salvation into the world, to change the very nature of life in the world.