all externals:  “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:  there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.  They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.  Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:  whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:  their feet are swift to shed blood:  destruction and misery are in their ways:  and the way of peace have they not known:  there is no fear of God before their eyes.”  So, fallen humanity, federated under Satan, will appear and act when the restraining hand of God is removed.  Though the unsaved are moral, educated, refined, or religious, they are not righteous in God’s sight; for the charge here brought against them is that “there is none righteous, no, not one;” and “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”  The following Scriptures which directly refer to the character of the Satanic system are, therefore, the estimate of God upon those conditions which the world holds to be ideal:  “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises:  that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world (Satanic system)” (II Pet.  I:4).  “For if after they have escaped the pollution of the world (Satanic system) through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning” (II Pet. 2:20).  “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world (Satanic system)” (Jas. 1:27).  “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world (Satanic system) is enmity with God?  Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world (Satanic system) is the enemy of God” (Jas. 4:4).  “For whosoever is born of God overcometh the world (Satanic system)” (I Jno. 5:4).  “Hereafter I will not talk much with you:  for the prince of this world (Satanic system) cometh, and hath nothing in me” (Jno. 14:30).  “And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God:  and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world (Satanic system)” (I Jno. 4:3).  In like manner the believer is said to have been “delivered from the present evil age” (Gal. 114) and “delivered from the power of darkness” (Col. 1:13) and is not to be conformed to this age (Rom. 12:2).

These judgments are made from the view-point of the purity and holiness of God.  In His sight the highest moral, educational, and religious ideals that the unregenerate world can comprehend are but a part of the confusion and darkness of this age when coupled with a rejection of His testimony in regard to His Son as their atoning Saviour.