awful outpouring of God's unmingled wrath, fall the wicked
inhabitants of the earth,--priests, rulers, and people, rich and poor, high
and low. "And the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of
the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be
lamented, neither gathered, nor buried."(1140)

At the coming of Christ the wicked are blotted from the face of the whole
earth,--consumed with the spirit of His mouth, and destroyed by the
brightness of His glory. Christ takes His people to the city of God, and
the earth is emptied of its inhabitants. "Behold, the Lord maketh the
earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and
scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof." "The land shall be utterly
emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word."
"Because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken
the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and
they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the
earth are burned."(1141)

The whole earth appears like a desolate wilderness. The ruins of cities
and villages destroyed by the earthquake, uprooted trees, ragged rocks
thrown out by the sea or torn out of the earth itself, are scattered over
its surface, while vast caverns mark the spot where the mountains have
been rent from their foundations.

Now the event takes place, foreshadowed in the last solemn service of the
day of atonement. When the ministration in the holy of holies had been
completed, and the sins of Israel had been removed from the sanctuary by
virtue of the blood of the sin-offering, then the scapegoat was presented
alive before the Lord; and in presence of the congregation the high priest
confessed over him "all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all
their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the
goat."(1142) In like manner, when the work of atonement in the heavenly
sanctuary has been completed, then in the presence of God and heavenly
angels, and the host of the redeemed, the sins of God's people will be
placed upon Satan; he will be declared guilty of all the evil which he has
caused them to commit. And as the scapegoat was sent away into a land not
inhabited, so Satan will be banished to the desolate earth, an uninhabited
and dreary wilderness.

The revelator foretells the banishment of Satan, and the condition of
chaos and desolation to which the