SATAN'S FINAL ASSAULT UPON THE KINGDOM OF GOD
"They went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about." Rev. 20:9
THE END OF THE WICKED
So soon as ever Lucifer introduced sin into heaven, it was certain, in the righteousness and omnipotence of God, that the day would come when sin would be blotted out of the perfect creation. Inspiration tells us that a time of final reckoning with sin was assured when Satan and a host of the angels with him lifted up the standard of mysterious rebellion against the law and harmony of heaven:
"The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." Jude 6.
Punishment for sin is assured. By listening to Satan's temptation, man became involved in sin. Then a divine Saviour was provided, through whom every soul might escape from the kingdom of darkness, and find salvation and life. But it is inevitable that those who refuse the way of life and reject the salvation of God, must finally be involved with Satan and sin in the day when sin is visited.
By Adam's sin, all his posterity inherited a sinful, dying nature. "In Adam all die," the Scripture says. But not a soul in the last day can plead Adam's sin and the inheritance of a fallen nature as an excuse for his own transgressions. By Christ's gift of His life for us, the sinner, with all his weaknesses, may become a partaker of the divine nature, and escape the power of the fleshly nature. By virtue of Christ's death for all, all recover from the death they die in Adam—the first death. All have a resurrection, the unjust as well as the just; and then every one gives account of himself to God, according to his own life and the use he has made of the light given him of God.
The Two Resurrections
The Scriptures emphasize the fact that there are to be two resurrections. Paul, before Felix, declared his belief the same as that of all the prophets,—"that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." Acts 24:15.
Jesus declared it in these words:
"The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." John 5:28, 29.