The Last Great War ...

Once more into the abyss … Finally, after so much delay, after so many years that have turned into centuries and centuries into millennia, the time for the ultimate extinction of evil has come. But alas, evil will not go down quietly. Once more, there is a time for war, one last final battle to decide the very fate of existence and death itself. This is the time to end all time, and after our work in heaven has been completed at the appointed time, it begins.

At the end of our first millennia in heaven, the time comes for end of evil. As such, the city itself moves from its stellar location back to the completely decimated planet earth. It descends on what used to be the city of Jerusalem. There is nothing there now, except the destruction that rained in great hail so many years ago. The bodies long rotten, decayed and returned to the dust they started from. The people of God do not wish to travel beyond the protective gates of the city, for at this time, evil lurks outside and will be set free “for a season”.

Satan is loosed from his bonds. The wicked dead are called forth from their graves. They do not come out as the righteous did, raised to the perfection of body and mind. Rather, the wicked are raised in exactly the same state that they went into the grave, diseased of body and mind. Every ailment is still in place, every scar, every wound, nothing is as it is wished to be. There is no guardian of light to lift them into the bosom of a loving God, as this is not something they ever wanted. The wicked wanted only the wealth and benefits of eternal life without any understanding of how to maintain true fulfillment. They would gladly steal what they wished for, even kill for it, as in life, nothing has changed. The only love that exists in them, is the warped love of self, that has always ruled their thoughts and actions.

Having come up from the grave, now what? Satan and his demonic fallen angel host begin to work miracles of their own, healing the wounds, and making ready an army. The city of God is a bright beacon of the perfection the wicked will not enjoy. The obvious wealth lies there for the taking. The inhabitants are push-overs, love-obsessed, weaklings. There will not be any real resistance, for the inhabitants do not wish to fight at all. Easy marks. And so the wicked are marshaled into hosts of mighty men, women, and children filled with hate in their eyes and souls. Love has left them. Hope has abandoned this crowd, They have nothing to lose, nothing is left to them but to kill the inhabitants and in so doing banish God to a far-off part of the universe to sleep while his fallen creations run amok, This is the fate that Satan convinces the wicked they can achieve under his leadership. He claims to know the secret to killing God, which is to say, putting God to sleep, so they can finally be free of His overbearing laws, and need for worship.

Here even at the end of all things, the great deceiver once again spins lies into beliefs. It is he who requires worship. It is he who would gladly control our every thought to insure his place at the forefront of our lives, even now on the precipice of losing it all. He has no choice to proceed to his doom. He has no options left to hurt God but to keep the wicked committed to rejecting the source of all Love. And so he uses the only weapon he has left, deceit and guile to motivate men to hasten their own destruction. No forgiveness is sought now. No repentance sought. No change of mind, heart, and soul – no surrender to Christ will be attempted now. No, only preparation to conquer what was not given.

If I wake in this crowd, rather than to the mercy of heaven and my loving Lord, I will know it is my fault, and I deserve what is coming. But I cannot imagine doing anything but laying face down in the dirt and weeping at the loss that I will never spend precious time with my Savior God. I would pray for death, for the mercy of non-existence. For to be so close to the source of love, and to find I have rejected it, to find my desire was insincere, my surrender far from complete, to find I have succeeded – only - in killing myself. This is the stark realization that proximity forces in the minds of those who thought they knew better. In the minds of all those who chose to serve expediency rather than God, in the minds of every skeptic who would not hear the word of the Lord, in the minds of every coward to who listened to the voice of men over the still small voice of conscience. To these; the stark realization that there will be no joyful reunions in perfection, only an imminent death.

Yet despite what are obvious facts, the wicked choose again to believe a lie, and they march on the city figuring to overthrow it easily. As they near the gates of pearl, the sky becomes a theatre such as has never been witnessed by men. Satan is frozen unable to move. The hearts of all are stilled by the spectacle of it all. Both righteous and wicked alike stare at the panoply that was once our atmosphere. In this 3D, HD, projection is told the story of Satan’s fall from grace, of our parents in the garden, and then down through time each significant event in the great controversy. Each man, woman, and child, whether saved or not, sees their own lives play out in real time before their eyes – but this time their eyes are opened to the attempts God makes to redeem us, and our responses to His love. We see the effects of the great controversy with evil on our lives from womb to tomb. Then for all to see, a replay of the life of Christ, His birth, death, resurrection and ascension. Afterwards, the martyrs and the history of gospel unfolds, finally his second coming replayed. Time is irrelevant during this presentation as all see their own lives, and the story is revealed in truth to all.

Even the wicked cannot resist the power of Love in front of their eyes, and each and every voice declares that ONLY the lamb is worthy, that truly there is ONLY one God, one Son, and one Holy Spirit. The righteous again hurl themselves down in abject humility discarding their crowns and weeping that they too once caused our Savior the pain He endured to save us all. The sadness is so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife. For while there is gratitude that mercy has saved each of the redeemed, there is great sadness in the city that wicked would not be so redeemed. The disease of self has now finally claimed the throngs that lay outside the city gates. They will never sing His praise with us, join in service, and experience the perfection of love. Their time is at an end.

And as the wicked return to their senses, hardening their hearts once again to the influence of love, their cry ascends to kill the creator. Where only moments before they could not contain acknowledging His worthiness, now that self has returned to control again, they must kill the thing that is worthy. For all deviation from God’s ways leads only to killing the creator. This is the lesson of sin. There is no middle road. There is no compromise with evil. There is only God and good and life and love, the opposite of all of that – no middle road, no grey area. Satan represents now to the world what sin does. He is unmasked before his followers. Men marvel that he is not nearly as impressive as he tried to portray. He is nothing. He is marred by the evil he has so long nourished in himself. Men begin to question why they were ever so deceived.

And the curtain drops … Clouds gather from nowhere, but rain will not be found. Instead, great drops of burning hail begin to fall to the ground. Fire rains from heaven itself, it explodes from the magma under the earth, there is no escape from it. And the wicked begin to burn, each consumed according to the sentences proscribed so long ago. Satan will die last, as he is the father of all evil, but he will die. And the effects of hell, the punishment of death, of eternal non-existence will last forever and ever. The smoke of their torment ascending forever and ever refers to the profound effects of sin ever fresh in each redeemed mind. One by one, all the wicked pass away into nonexistence, until finally only death itself is left to be consumed. And so it is. No more death. No more fire. No more punishment to dread, or to witness. The war is finally over. Evil is no more. Gone forever. It is time for something we can hardly begin to comprehend in our current state …