- 26 - The references in Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians to the course followed by God’s work of Redemption are brief but clear: I Corinthians 15: 22-28: ‘For as together with Adam all died, so also together with Christ all shall be returned to life, but each in his turn: First Christ; then they that are Christ’s at his coming. Then the rest, when he delivers up the kingdom to God, the Father, as soon as he has abolished all other sovereignty and power. For Christ must reign until he has laid all enemies at God's feet. The last enemy that shall be vanquished is “death”. For God put all things in subjection under Christ. But when Christ says, “all things are subjected”, it is evident that He (namely God) is excepted Who did subject all things unto the Son. And when all things have been subjected to Him (God), then shall the Son also subject himself to Him Who did subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all.’ Thus, all things will return to God that had been separated from Him and had been subjected as spiritually ‘dead’ to the prince of spiritual death. Christ will lead all things back to God. He was also the first to return from hell, the realm of the Prince of Death, after having descended there and vanquished Lucifer on his own ground. His was the first Resurrection from the spiritually dead. As time passes, all the spiritually dead will follow him, as they learn to know and to love God, but ‘each in his turn’, which depends upon the spirits themselves. • Those who hasten and apply themselves to seeking God and to living as He would have them live will come before those who give no thought at all to a return or show but little zeal. E v e r y t h i n g d e p e n d s u p o n t h e i r o w n i n i t i a t i v e ! He who fails repeatedly in his examinations will be late in reaching the goal. This is true of life on earth, as well as in the Beyond. The last of all to return unto God will be the Prince of Death himself, Lucifer. Paul calls him ‘Death’. For he is the cause of all apostasy from God’s kingdom and, hence, of spiritual death. He is the ‘murderer from the beginning’, guilty of the spiritual death of all those who are separated from God, and of having done his utmost throughout millions of years to prevent the return of his subjects to the Realm of Life in God. He is, therefore, the personification of separation from God, the personification of death. Thus, when you read in the Revelation of John. John 20: 13: ‘And death gave up the dead’, the meaning is that Lucifer, the Prince of Death, was forced to give up the spiritually dead that were in his kingdom. And when I said that the order of the return of the fallen spirits depends upon the free will of each one, I must qualify this statement by adding that:
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