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It is a frightful commentary upon the nature of mankind that this showy rebellion is able to muster millions and millions of followers who gladly join in a last desperate effort to strike at God. Truly the carnal mind is enmity against God. The number is as the sands of the sea.4
This section shows something of the deep, complex nature of evil. The source of rebellion against God does not lie in man's environment or fundamentally with the devil but springs up from deep within man's own heart. The return of Satan will demonstrate this in the most dramatic manner once for all.5
Men claim that they are seeking, evermore, a "perfect form of government"; but that they are not at all seeking such a government, but that they actually hate it, will be evidenced by their instant revolt to Satan's banner when he is loosed for a "little season" after the Millennium. For we shall find the hordes of mankind rushing up to overthrow the righteous and benevolent reign of Christ at Jerusalem!6
The rebellion is ultimately permitted by God who released Satan from prison for this very test. He is used to cull the last from among the unfaithful from the midst of humanity for God's impending judgment. This rebellion also demonstrates to mankind their utter inability to vanquish sin apart from God's power. Man now fails his final dispensational test:From this we see that the "Millennial Dispensation," like all the six Dispensations before it, will end in failure. God will have tested man in "Innocence," under "Conscience," under "Self-Government," under the "Headship of the Family," under "Law," under "Grace," and finally under the influence of the "Holy Spirit," free from Satanic influences, and under them all he will prove himself to be hopelessly, incurably and incorrigibly bad.7
the beloved cityNotes
1 Frederick William Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 666.
2 Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 625.
3 James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Ontario: Woodside Bible Fellowship, 1996), G3925.
4 Donald Grey Barnhouse, Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1971), 388.
5 Alan F. Johnson, Revelation: The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1966), 191.
6 William R. Newell, Revelation: Chapter by Chapter (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1994,c1935), 320.
7 Clarence Larkin, Dispensational Truth (Glenside, PA: Rev. Clarence Larkin Estate, 1918, 1920), 96.
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