Word, and it goes into their eyes or ears, they burst violently into flames
and expel it as something that is about to break their heads.
Gaining control of the hells, restructuring the heavens, and then 117
establishing a church can be illustrated by various comparisons.
They can be illustrated by a comparison with an army of looters or
rebels who invade a country or a city, set fire to the houses, plunder the
citizens’ goods, and divide the spoils among themselves, enjoying and
glorifying themselves because of it. Redemption itself can be illustrated
by a comparison with an upright monarch who attacks these invaders
with an army, puts some of them to the sword, imprisons the rest in
labor camps, takes the stolen goods away from them to give back to the
citizens, and then restructures the country and gives it protection against
attack by similar assailants in the future.
It could also be illustrated by a comparison with wild animals that have
formed packs and are charging out of the forest attacking flocks and herds
and even people. The people do not dare to go outside the walls of the city
and cultivate the land, so the fields are becoming deserts and the people in
the city are about to die of hunger. Redemption could be illustrated by
analogy with killing some of the wild animals, driving away the others, and
protecting the fields and plains from any further attack of the kind.
It could also be illustrated by locusts that are consuming every green
thing in the ground and then by the means of stopping them from going
any farther. Also by caterpillars at the beginning of summer that strip the
leaves off the trees (thus preventing the fruit from coming) so that the trees
stand as naked as in midwinter; and then by the act of shaking the cater-
pillars off and restoring the garden to flowering and fruit-bearing.
The church would have been in a comparable situation unless the
Lord through redemption had separated the good from the evil, had cast
the evil into hell, and had lifted the good to heaven.
What would it be like in an empire or a country that knew no justice or
judgment? Justice and judgment take evil people away from the company
of the good; they protect good people from being violated so that they may
live safely in their own homes and, as it says in the Word, sit in serenity
under their own fig tree and their own vine [ 1 Kings 4 : 25 ; Micah 4 : 4 ].
2. Without that redemption no human being could have been saved and 118
no angels could have continued to exist in their state of integrity.First I need
to say what redemption is. To redeem means to free the captive and the
bound from damnation, to rescue them from everlasting death, to
snatch them from hell, and to carry them away from the hand of the
§118 the lord the redeemer & redemption 169