Here we truly have reason for saying: Praise be to God that we are not expected to look for the unrestrained interference of the powers for the sake of the restitution of our entire being, but that we can adhere to the regulated, law-restrained acts of the powers, fully convinced that the good work which is thus begun shall be completed in this manner, in spite of the devil and in spite of death.
The power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ does not work here in the same way as in the case of the resurrection of Lazarus; for there it acted unrestrainedly and visibly, even to the unbelieving Jewish people. Here it works invisibly, but none the less tangibly, and a far greater goal is to be attained. I am not to be resurrected like Lazarus to once more live under conditions of sin, and to once more face death. I am to be resurrected from death and from the conditions of sin wholly prepared to be at home in the halls of Heaven. In order to achieve this I am not to look for _sensations_ and _movements_ in bluish dimness, but to adhere faithfully to the regulated, law-restrained acts of the powers within the church of the Lord.
It is in the faith in this action of the powers that we are, with Paul the apostle, to look forward to the resurrection of all things. I do not think that through the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ all things are to be restored to the extent, as some have thought, that even the devil himself is to enter into the kingdom of God and become a leader of angels as he had been before; nor do I think that the godless and the infidels will be placed among the Godfearing and the faithful in the Kingdom of Heaven without repentance and faith. But I do believe for a certainty that all things are to be restored according to the eternal design of God in which the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is allowed to act. And for that we are yearning within the church.
But nature also yearns; that, too, is subject to corruption. That, too, shall be freed of the thraldom of corruption into the glorious freedom of the children of God. When the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ has penetrated nature, then it will appear as the new earth in which justice abideth. But just as man must pass through death, through perdition, humanly seen, so the ancient earth must pass through death and perdition, and the scripture testifies with equal firmness in the case of both, that man must die and the earth must perish.