which is actually a craving belonging to their flesh, comes back into play
and thrusts out any thought of the truth.
Afterward, the wise man of the city used many examples to show
what faith is like when it is taken to be the primary thing: “It is merely
earthly. It is a conviction without any spiritual life. Therefore it is not
faith. I could almost say that there is no more spirituality in your faith
than there would be in a faith that consisted of thinking about the coun-
try of Mongolia, a diamond mine there, and the royal treasure of the
Mongolian emperor.”
Angry at hearing this, the dragon spirit went away. He reported back
to his people outside the city. When they heard that someone had
defined goodwill as a desire to do good to one’s neighbor on account of
salvation and eternal life, they all shouted, “That’s a lie!”
The dragon himself said, “It is criminal! Surely when people perform
acts of goodwill for the sake of their own salvation they are hoping to
earn merit.”
[ 8 ] Then they said to each other, “We should call together even more
of our people, besiege this city, and throw these ‘goodwills’ out.”
Yet as they were working on this, fire appeared to come down from
heaven and devour them! The fire was in fact a manifestation of their
own rage and hatred against the people in the city for demoting faith
from first place to second, placing it far beneath goodwill, and saying
otherwise it would not be faith. It looked like they were devoured by fire,
because hell opened under their feet and swallowed them up.
Things like this happened in many places at the time of the Last
Judgment. These events were also meant by the following passage in the
Book of Revelation:
The dragon will go out to lead astray the nations that are in the four
corners of the earth to gather them for war. They climbed up onto the
plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the
beloved city, but fire came down from God out of heaven and
devoured them. (Revelation 20 : 8 , 9 )389 The fifth memorable occurrence.On one occasion I saw a document
being sent down from heaven to a community in the world of spirits. In
that community there were two people who governed the church. They
had ministers and elders under them. The document strongly urged the
people there to acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as the God of heaven