The Future Will Prove the Past.

When the world changed, few were aware it was happening, at least in the beginning. It was an event that seemed to occur overnight, not by some mighty wind that blew away the world that was, but the way water soaks into a towel. Goodness emerged from a billion points, seeping into every low place as if it were percolating up from the ground. Then it began to flow down from the high places, and when the earth was fully saturated, all the people stood still and marveled, wondering how such a thing could emerge so suddenly; but those who were watching from the first sign of dew knew the full course of how it came to be, and they knew the cost.

The ones who would have claimed the earth for themselves were not happy. They realized too late what it could mean for them, but they could do nothing to stop it. They tried, but the change was happening everywhere, and there was no focus upon which they could train their weapons, and one by one their weapons failed. All their resources were not sufficient to preserve the darkness they had made, and like sprouts in a furnace they withered to become nothing more than a blackened ash that could be carried away by the slightest breeze. Then they were gone. Never more would they rise to be the gatekeepers of the world, and their downfall was so complete that to the people it began to seem like they had never lived.

A new morning had dawned. A more brilliant sun had breached the horizon, and when the people saw it, a song of gratefulness went up that seemed to join with the endless sky. Even those who had watched in stunned bewilderment joined in, knowing they were wrong to prefer the night, and they forsook the darkness in which they had once laid themselves down to sleep. The sun, whom no man could tame, only strengthened to burn away the lingering mists, and the morning advanced with brightness so fierce that nothing could keep out the light, and the people marveled again as they looked upon a landscape that bore no shadows.

It was as if a curtain had fallen. The small horizon the rulers had fixed around the people had vanished, and they suddenly knew those limits had always been a lie. They opened their eyes wider to comprehend a world far bigger than they had ever imagined, and they began to walk upon it, treading the broad land to find new places, and the earth that had been broken and shattered and poisoned by her former captors welcomed them. She sent up healing through their feet, and the broken and shattered and poisoned among them began to heal.

That was the generation who stepped out of the darkness to make the world a better place, and the early risers who had reached their hands up to God from the first faint glimmers were pleased. They had helped to banish evil from the earth, and after that they became its vigilant guardians, watching over it lest the darkness creep in again; for the world that once existed was gone, the world that had been captured by the lies of the ones who despised everything but themselves. The earth was never really theirs to take, and the Almighty showed them that truth when the fullness of time had come, but He did not show them gently. When His justice was loosed in the earth, it found every liar. There was no place they could flee, and when they were gone, their lies went with them. In the end there were pockets where evil still remained, but they were few, and they were small. The earth in all its fullness was finally free, and what was left of the dark rocked and trembled under the everlasting bombardment of truth. The long night was over. It was swept away by the light of a Great Awakening.