All Things New With John Eldredge预览

If the coming Restoration is to be fulfilled on the earth and in our lives, Satan and his armies must be destroyed. He must never be allowed in again.

We are letting the great stories awaken our imaginations to the coming kingdom, fill our hearts with brilliant images and hopeful expectation. Let us seize the moment crucial to the climax of every story and the redemption we long to see: that glorious moment when evil is defeated. . . .

Pause and let this be true: evil is judged and utterly destroyed. Forever and ever. Not just in the fairy tale, but here in reality, in our story. Satan, his armies, and every form of evil are destroyed with a punishment that never ends, under justice unrelenting. 

It feels like a ten-ton weight being lifted off my being.

What will it be like to no longer be assaulted? To be utterly free from accusation; to look in the mirror and hear no accusing thoughts or voices. To be completely free of all temptation and the sabotage of your character—not because you are successfully resisting it in a moment of great resolve, but because it is no longer in existence, anywhere in the world. What will it be like to have the dark clouds lifted between us and our beloved Jesus, that veil that so often clouds our relationship with him? Imagine when all the physical affliction, emotional torment, abuse—all the evil in this world has vanished.

Think of it—what evils will you no longer have to live with personally? Oh, the joy we will experience when we get to watch with our own eyes the Enemy brought down for good, cast into his eternal torment! Oh, the hope that begins to rise at the thought of a world where the Enemy no longer gets to do what he does. To see our loved ones released from their lifelong battles. To be released from our own lifelong battles, knowing with utter surety that the kingdom of death and darkness is forever destroyed.