O Lord, you will keep us safe and protect us from such people
forever. The wicked freely strut about when what is vile is
honored among men.
—Psalm 12:7–8
Pandemonium is the region ruled by Satan. It is a corrupted replica of heaven, built on discord and disorder, war and suffering, horror and despair. It is where everything that is vile is honored and where Satan rules over those condemned to serve him as prisoners of sin and despair. And it is Satan’s chief desire to establish this counterfeit of God’s kingdom here on earth.
No one should doubt, given the state of the world at any given moment, that he has made serious inroads. It was into such a place that God sent “the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:3–4).
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, saying “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we are asking God to rescue us from a place that looks very much like Satan’s Pandemonium, where what is vile is honored, and what is pure, righteous, and godly is hated. When we become Kingdom builders, we acknowledge a King who will “destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, a sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever” (Isaiah 25:7–8).
—Eric Kampmann, Signposts
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