At the end of Revelation, all things will be made right, and that means that all things that are wrong with the world will need to be done away with. Everything has been corrupted—even the ground is cursed (Gen 3:17)—and only Jesus can fix it, for all power and authority are in His hands. Those of us who follow Him will be given bodies free of corruption, but unfortunately, those who have chosen to follow something else only have their old bodies to rely on, which cannot proceed into new creation. And so they, along with everything else that is wrong with the world, will have to be removed from it in order for the earth to look as God always intended it to since Eden.
We in the modern world like to think that we are completely independent when it comes to everything we do—that we are allegiant only to our hearts alone. But from a Biblical perspective everyone is allegiant to a cosmic power. We are born into nations under the authority of the false gods (Deut 32:8). We side with rulers who have become puppets for the false gods. We buy into and preach the ideologies of the false gods. From a Biblical perspective even those who claim to be atheists still fall under spiritual control.
We are imagers of God, born into a world that has been cursed and is under the control of Satan, the little-g “god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4). We have all sinned (Ro 3:23) and will sin many more times before we die. We know that without help, humanity is hopeless. And despite all the good we can do having been made in God’s image, we still know that the corruption is too strong for us to not be left in the evil of our sins.
But there is one King named Jesus and one Kingdom named Heaven that will live on while the kingdoms of the false gods fall. And those who are citizens of Heaven will be granted the immortality of resurrection life that comes with the condition of following Jesus. Only they will be able to stand in the new world.
The false gods cannot save their citizens. They do not have the power. They cannot even save themselves, for the one true God has declared that the false gods will die like mortals while He inherits the people that left their nations to follow Him (Ps 82:6-8). And to those who follow the false gods into their evil, Jesus’ will say, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt 25:41). Those who are not allegiant to Jesus and Heaven will be lumped into the same place as the false gods—they will go into the same fire meant to destroy immortal spiritual beings. Allegiance to Jesus and Jesus alone is our only way out of evil and into righteousness.
All will eventually be perfect and that will happen by Jesus’ things being redeemed into the perfection of Heaven and imperfect things being discarded into the lake of fire. In the end, even Death and Hades themselves will be thrown into Hell to be burned up (Rev 20:14), and so there will be no Death or Hades to return to following the death that comes in the lake of fire. This is all a part of making the world perfect—for can things ever be perfect if evil lives on forever in Hell? It seems to me that the lake of fire is the end of ends.
And the good news of the gospel is that if God had His way, everyone would choose to follow Jesus now and no one would be thrown into the lake of fire. But He’s not going to overrule our free will to make that happen; For free will is a part of God’s Grand Framework. We have to choose between Jesus and Satan; righteousness and sin; good and evil; Heaven and Hell. He’s extending us an invitation right now to join His kingdom. Will we accept?
Jamin Bradley 