Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/462

 world.” (p. 638.) “The end of the world will not consist in its being completely destroyed and annihilated, but in its being changed and renovated by fire.—The matter of the reëstablishment of men will come to an end with the general judgment, where will take place the revelation of the sons of God. Consequently, the creatures themselves must be freed from labour and corruption, into the freedom of the glory of the children of God; the whole material world must be purified from the deleterious consequences of human sin and be renovated. This renovation of the world will take place on the last day by means of fire, so that in the new heaven and the new earth nothing sinful will be left, but righteousness alone will abide (2 Peter iii. 13).” (p. 639.)

So here is clearly expressed the idea that the renovation of the world was not achieved by the redemption, that that was spoken of only as an adornment of speech, and that the present renovation will be produced by Christ, not at his first, but at his second coming.

Proofs from Holy Scripture of the correctness of this end and the renovation of the world by fire.

267. (b) The end of Christ’s kingdom of grace and the beginning of the kingdom of glory; remarks about the chiliasm, or millennium, of Christ. That is confirmed. The kingdom of grace will come to an end and the kingdom of glory will begin, that is, the real liberation from sin and death, that is, what heretofore has been asserted of the kingdom of grace. Proofs of that from Holy Scripture, and a controversy with those who said that one thousand years before the end Christ would come upon earth, would raise the righteous from the dead and would reign with them for a thousand years. That is not true.

268. Connection with the preceding, and nature of this retribution. After the judgment, Christ will pronounce the sentence. “This retribution after the general judgment will be full, complete, decisive. Full, that is, not