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Drive into San Francisco now. Hear the sirens screaming as the police answer a call, listen to ambulances with their peculiar shrieks, watch fire engines swerving around corners to get to a fire before it is too late. Remember that this is where the "drug thing" had its beginning. As you are remembering the sixties, look at the porno advertisements hanging out in the streets on today's buildings. Smog is not only a matter of polluted air that hurts human lungs; there is intellectual, emotional, psychological, and spiritual smog pouring forth in so many mediums in all the cities of the world.

The golden beauty and twinkling lights of San Francisco do not spell perfection—this is paradise lost. Here are lost dreams, agony, depression, ugliness. Here are all the marks of the spoiled creation, spoiled at the time of "the fall." This golden city has so much that mars or "defiles" it; the golden perfection was only an illusion.

Come back to Revelation 21 now and read the last verse: "And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life." Nothing is going to mar, spoil, or pollute this city in any way. No person who is not perfect will even be there: only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life will be present. And when are the names recorded? A name is recorded at the same moment that Jesus gives "eternal life" and states that a person will never perish, the moment when that person is born again by accepting the substitutionary work of Christ Jesus. Listen:

And God shall wipe all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful (Rev. 21:4-5).

This is reality. Heaven is a place. There is a city we are going to see and walk in. Neither the place, nor the singing instead of sighing, nor the pleasure instead of pain, is an illusion. We await that which is real.

Are you sitting by the bed of someone struggling for breath in a painful, terminal illness? Have you just had a shattering telegram about a plane crash? Do you have fears about the moment of leaving your body? Has a child of yours died? Do you long for beauty and perfection but fear you will never find it? Has your life been a series of disappointments and depressions? Does the spoiled universe cause you to doubt that God can keep his promises and restore all things? Remember with Isaiah what God spoke centuries ago to reassure his children:

For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed: but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles and all thy borders pleasant stones (Isa. 54:10-12).

This hints at the shining, golden, gleaming beauty God is preparing for his children. Enjoy a distant view of San Francisco by sunset, but thank God while you look at it for his city, which will fulfill all his promises of perfection, with no letdown.

This article originally appeared in the March 12, 1976, issue of Christianity Today magazine. Edith Schaeffer and her husband, Francis,  founded L'Abri Fellowship in 1955 in Switzerland. Her books include L'Abri, What Is a Family?, Christianity Is Jewish, and The Art of Life.

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47