These wicked, rebellious rulers are eternal. They always will be present in the creation although contained in the Lake of Fire.

We must keep in mind that as long as God allows angels and men to have the power of choice, the possibility of sin, of an uprising against God, is present. This fact is revealed at the end of the thousand-year Kingdom Age after Christ and the saints have governed the nations of the saved in righteousness (Revelation 20:8).

The Christian churches have held the mistaken assumption that once we "die and go to Heaven" the sin problem is over; we cannot sin in Heaven. The truth is, sin began in Heaven. Sin did not begin on the earth in the garden of Eden. Sin entered Eden from the spirit realm. We still are wrestling against the sin in the spirit realm.

"Sin can never enter there," the old song goes, referring to Heaven. But sin began in Heaven. It is the new Jerusalem that sin cannot enter because the new Jerusalem is guarded by saints in whom resistance to sin has been created.

Why would the Lord teach us throughout our lifetime how to overcome sin if He then were going to bring us to a place or state where it is not possible for us to sin? Does this make sense to you? Aren't we being trained now so we shall be able to serve God throughout eternity?

Today any person or angel can choose to rebel against God. The same will be true one billion years from today.

The solution to the sin problem is not to die and enter the spirit realm, for it was in the spirit realm that sin originated. The only solution to the sin problem is the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ will not sin. When He is formed in us, we shall choose not to sin.

Whoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. (I John 3:9)

It is not that sin cannot occur in the new Jerusalem. Rather it is true that sin shall not be allowed to enter or occur in the new Jerusalem, but only because the inhabitants of the new Jerusalem are filled with the Nature of Christ; not because there will be something in the environment or in their personality that is unable to make certain choices. We always shall be able to reject God's will, but we shall choose not to reject His will because our personality will have been transformed by the Life of Christ that has been wrought in us.

One must be born again in order to enter the Kingdom of God because it is what is born in us that is the Kingdom, the rule of God.

The Seed that is in us is Christ, if we have been born again of God. The Seed cannot sin, in the sense that it will not sin, because the Seed is Christ. As Christ is formed in us, the love of righteousness and the hatred of lawlessness are formed in us. It is the inner creation of the love of righteousness and the hatred of lawlessness that is the wall of the new Jerusalem. The Nature of Christ wrought in the saints is the wall John saw surrounding the new Jerusalem, the Church, the Wife of the Lamb.

To be continued.