Imagine a world with no devil.
No tempter whispering in anyone's ear. No god of this world blinding the minds of men. No roaring lion prowling around looking for someone to devour. Gone. Locked away. For a thousand years, Satan gets blamed for absolutely nothing - - - because Satan isn't there.
Now imagine that same world has perfect government. No corruption. No bought judges. No lying politicians. No laws written to protect the powerful and crush the weak. The King of kings Himself sits on the throne, and He cannot be bribed, fooled, or lobbied.
Imagine that same world is soaked in the knowledge of God the way the sea is full of water. No war. No famine. No poverty grinding people into desperation. Children living to be a hundred. The wolf lying down beside the lamb.
Every excuse we have ever offered for human sin - - - removed. All of it.
And at the end of those thousand years, when Satan is loosed for one last season, the number of people who follow him into rebellion against Christ is - - - and I want you to hear this - - - "as the sand of the sea" (Revelation 20:8).
Where on earth did they come from?
The third answer nobody wants
For generations men have argued nature versus nurture. Why does a person become what he becomes? Is it his genetics — his nature? Or is it his upbringing, his environment, his schooling, his parents, his poverty, his culture — the things that nurtured him?
And listen, both sides are partly right. Scripture never pretends that environment doesn't matter. Bad companions matter. Bad government matters. A corrupt culture matters. God's Word says plainly, "evil communications corrupt good manners" (1 Corinthians 15:33).
But Christianity introduces a third answer, and it is one the world will do almost anything to avoid.
Man's deepest problem is not what surrounds him. It is not what was handed down to him. Man's deepest problem is what is inside him.
My Lord said it plainly: "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit... all these evil things come from within, and defile the man" (Mark 7:21-23).
Nor is that a verse your therapist, your professor, or your favorite politician will ever build a program around. Because if the problem is inside us, then every fix on the outside is just rearranging the furniture in a burning house.
Which brings us back to that thousand-year kingdom. Because God, in His wisdom, has scheduled a period of history designed to settle this argument once and for all. It is called the Millennial Reign of Christ, and during it, God removes man's excuses one at a time.
God removes the devil
"And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years" (Revelation 20:2).
We give the devil far too much credit. "The devil made me do it" has been the oldest dodge since Eden. But James won't let us have it: "every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed" (James 1:14).
Satan is real. He is dangerous. He is our adversary, and I will never tell you otherwise. But he did not manufacture the wickedness in your heart. He found it already there and struck a match to it.
You don't need a devil outside of you when you've got an old nature inside of you.
And the Millennium proves it. Take Satan off the board entirely — and sin still does not disappear.
God removes bad government
For the first time since Eden, mankind will live under perfect government.
How much of our national energy gets spent blaming whoever is in charge? The Democrats blame the Republicans. The Republicans blame the Democrats. And both sides quietly laugh at us, because as long as we're busy fighting each other, we forget that we're mostly getting taken to the cleaners by both of them - - - but I digress.
"If only we could elect the right people." "If only the laws were fair." "If only government weren't so corrupt." Well — God is going to answer that argument directly. He is not sending a better president. He is sending the King of kings.
"...and the government shall be upon his shoulder... Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end" (Isaiah 9:6-7).
No bribery. No backroom deals. No bought verdicts. A Judge who is omniscient, who cannot be lobbied, fooled, or bought, and who is always, perfectly right.
And still - - - at the end of it - - - there are rebels.
Perfect government can never produce perfect hearts.
God removes the corrupt culture
Mankind will finally live in a society saturated with the knowledge of God.
"Look at the culture these kids are growing up in" — and there is real truth in that complaint. Entertainment shapes us. Education shapes us. Companionship shapes us. But the Millennium takes even that excuse away, because "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9).
Picture being born into that kingdom. Your grandparents can tell you what the Tribulation was actually like. You could talk to glorified saints who took the Heavenly ride home in the Rapture. Jerusalem isn't a place you read about — it's where Jesus reigns, and the nations travel there year after year to worship Him (Zechariah 14:16).
No debate over whether Jesus existed. He's ruling the planet. No debate over whether the prophecies were true. Your entire civilization is living inside their fulfillment.
And still — some hearts refuse Him.
God removes war and want
Mankind will experience peace and prosperity unlike anything since the garden. "...they shall beat their swords into plowshares... neither shall they learn war any more" (Isaiah 2:4). Broken homes, dead fathers, orphans, famine, trauma — all of that collateral wreckage, gone. Even creation is restored, the wolf dwelling with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6). Even human lifespans stretch back toward Eden's length (Isaiah 65:20).
"If people just weren't struggling so hard, they wouldn't act this way." God calls that bluff too. He hands humanity security, abundance, and long life — and the human heart still needs the one thing no government program on earth can deliver.
Better circumstances can restrain sinful behavior, but they cannot regenerate a sinful heart.
That distinction is everything. And now comes my least favorite part, because the church needs to hear it as much as anyone.
What we keep offering, and what God actually offers
Good parents matter. Good churches matter. Christian schools matter. Good laws matter. Good influences matter. I am not waving any of that away — every bit of it can restrain evil, encourage righteousness, and teach truth.
But none of it — not one item on that list — can perform the miracle of the new birth.
And too often the church acts as though it can. We build programs, we polish our production, we run our campaigns, and we quietly start to believe that if we could just improve people's circumstances we could improve their souls. Humanity's whole playbook is the same: educate him, reform him, relocate him, counsel him, change his government, give him opportunity. Some of that is genuinely good and worth doing.
But in the end, it is all just lipstick on a pig.
Because after a thousand years of the best environment humanity has known since Eden — no devil, no corruption, no godless culture, no war — Satan is loosed, and those who march out to follow him number "as the sand of the sea" (Revelation 20:7-8). They weren't raised under tyranny. They weren't taught Jesus was a myth. They weren't wondering whether God was real. They were born into paradise.
It may be the single most devastating demonstration of human depravity anywhere in Scripture. And it lands on one verdict:
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" — Jeremiah 17:9
That is why Jesus never told Nicodemus to get reformed, get educated, or get a better government. He told him, "Ye must be born again" (John 3:7).
Mankind does not need reformation. We need regeneration. And that regeneration begins, for every last one of us, in the same place — bowing at the foot of the cross.
— Signed, A Heart That Needed Changing Too