Angelwalk

"Present your bodies a living sacrifice...But is a body riddled with the residue of mindless consumption....is such a body truly, truly, truly a living sacrifice...bodies are to be worthy as well as living...But this is the world. The domain of the flesh."
The angel, on his walk through the history and future of the world, to see for himself what Lucifer has been condemned to Hell for, says of this world, "If I had a stomach, if there were bowels within me, I would be in great distress. I would vomit up the sickness that grips me from within like that which I see without."
The angel met several people on his walk, after their spirit left their dead body, he talked with them briefly before their spirit was taken to heaven or to hell. While they were alive, he watched, invisible to them, and learned...a Philosopher was my favorite character, of course. He said "...I began a slow climb back to faith...and I came to believe. Skepticism reared up from time to time, a dragon that had to be fought back constantly. I don't think it is ever really slain. I think it retreats in many of us, waiting for events or circumstances or people or a combination thereof to resurrect it with special ferocity. Becoming a Christian doesn't banish the Devil from us for the rest of our days. It seems to me that the evil one is, rather, driven to a redoubling of his efforts when one over whom he once held sway breaks loose......He caused our sin nature from the very beginning [in Eden]. He can hook those without Christ in the same way a pusher hooks a soon-to-be-drug-addict. Once the obsession, the addiction, is commenced, all he has to make sure of is there is a supply around to entice, to maintain the addiction. He himself is certainly not necessary in this regard. People aid his awful designs...Satan created this kind of atmosphere, the moral, spiritual atmosphere which we breathe today. A brilliant chap...his handiwork saves him a great deal of legwork."
It is a good book, Angelwalk by Roger Elwood. These are excerpts because I could not say it any better. I'm definitely not a writer. Another excerpt, from the afterword, describes precisely what I took from this book, "...if this book has moved us, then there's no escape. We're trapped. There's only one thing left. It's to ask, 'Lord, what will You have me to do?' And mean it."