e strength of love, that dares loose Satan out that so we must
choose in the face of opposition. For faith isn't faith except it can
stand the fire test, the friction fire test of opposition. Here is the
tenderness of love, that longs to have a return love as pure and free as
its own, and so gives fullest opportunity for it to be revealed and to
grow.

So Satan is loosed out for his tempting work. And another great world
crisis comes, and another great settlement; this the final one. The
devil, his beastly Antichrist and false prophet, are put out of the way
forever.

A great dazzling throne is set. And One sits on it with a face of
indescribable glory. Then comes the second resurrection, of all those
not included in the first resurrection a thousand years before. This is
a judgment of _all who have died_, with the exception already noted. The
judgment of the living spoken of in Matthew, twenty-five, probably is in
connection with the closing scene of the great crisis, just before this
judgment of the resurrected dead, or possibly in connection with this
judgment. This is the final judgment.

Gladness and distress mingle in reading the account: gladness that the
contest, age long, is over; distress to find that for some there is what
is described briefly but with terrible intensity, in the words, "the
lake of fire." Yet there is still comfort in noting the language used
of these,--"_if any_."[182] It is not the language of a great
multitude, but rather of an incorrigible scattered and scant minority.

Home at Last.

And now for the seventh time in this last vision John says, "I saw." Bit
by bit the view opens up before his eyes, from the coming of the Lord
Jesus out of the opened heavens, on and on, until now the final view of
all bursts in a winsome glory before his astonished, delighted eyes.

God's own ideal, that He has been carrying in His heart, is pictured.
That ideal is that He and man shall dwell together as a family. The
ideal is not a Church nor a Kingdom. These are merely great means to a
greater end. The ideal is the family, all dwelling together in sweetest
harmony and content, with a common board, and a common fireside in the
twilight of the day, and all the sweet fellowship that these stand for.

John sees a new heaven and a new earth, the old heaven and earth gone,
and with them the separation of the wide sea gone forever, too. He sees
the holy city, Jerusalem, made over new, coming down out of