# 7. The Regeneration of the World
All the kingdoms of this world shall soon become the kingdoms of our Lord the King. He will hurl all the present potentates from their thrones. He will grind to powder the despotisms, civil and ecclesiastic; and with the blast of his mouth, give them to the four winds of heaven. The antichristian power, whether it be called Papistical, Mahomedan, Pagan, or Atheistic, will as certainly be destroyed, as Jesus reigns in heaven. No trace of them shall remain. The best government on earth, call it English or American, has within it the seeds of its own destruction — carries in its constitution a millstone, which will sink it to the bottom of the sea. They acknowledge not that God has set his Christ upon his throne. They will not kiss the Son. Society under their economy is not blessed. The land mourns through the wickedness of those that sit in high places. Ignorance, poverty, and crime abound, because of the injustice and iniquities of those who guide the destinies of nations. Men that fear not God, and love not his Son, and that regard not the maxims of his government, yet wear the sword, and sway the sceptre in all lands.
This is wholly adverse to the peace and happiness of the world. Therefore, he will break them in pieces like a potter's vessel, and set up an order of society in which justice, inflexible justice, shall have uncontrolled dominion. Jesus will be universally acknowledged by all the race of living men, and all nations shall do him homage. This state of society will be the consummation of the Christian religion, in all its moral influences and tendencies upon mankind.
How far this change is to be effected by moral, and how far by physical means, is not the subject of our present inquiry. But the preparation of a people for the coming of the Lord must be the result of the restoration of the ancient gospel and order of things. And come when it may, the day of the regeneration of the world will be a day as wonderful and terrible as was the day of the deluge, of Sodom's judgment, or of Jerusalem's catastrophe. Who shall stand when the Lord does this?
But all the regenerations, physical and moral, individual, congregational, or national, are but types and shadows, or means of preparation for the —
# Regeneration of the Heavens and the Earth
The Bible begins with the generations of the heavens and the earth; but the Christian revelation ends with the regenerations, or new creation of the heavens and the earth. This the ancient promise of God, confirmed to us by the Christian Apostles. The present elements are to be changed by fire. The old or antediluvian earth, was purified by water; but the present earth is reserved for fire, with all the works of man that are upon it. It shall be converted into a lake of liquid fire. But the death in Christ will have been regenerated in body, before the old earth is regenerated by fire. The bodies of the saints will be as homogeneous with the new earth and heavens as their present bodies are with the present heavens and earth. God recreates, regenerates, but annihilates nothing; and, therefore, the present earth is not to be annihilated. The best description we can give of this regeneration, is in the words of one who had a vision of it on the island of Patmos. He describes it as far as it is connected with the New Jerusalem, which is to stand upon the new earth, under the canopy of the new heaven: —
'And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the former heaven and the former earth were passed away; and the sea was no more. And I, John, saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, descending from God out of heaven, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall pitch his tent among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be among them — their God. And he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more, nor grief, nor crying; nor shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.'