I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. He seized the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole inhabited earth, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were finished. After this, he must be freed for a short time. I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them. I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and such as didn’t worship the beast nor his image, and didn’t receive the mark on their forehead and on their hand. They lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead didn’t live until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over these, the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and will reign with him one thousand years.
And after the thousand years, Satan will be released from his prison, and he will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. They went up over the width of the earth, and surrounded the camp of the saints, and the beloved city. Fire came down out of heaven from God and devoured them. The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet are also. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1–10 That is of hell, whither God threw down the…
That is of hell, whither God threw down the Angels which had sinned, and bound them in chains of darkness to be kept unto damnation, 2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6.
Now followeth the third place of the prophetical history, which is of the victory whereby Christ overcame the dragon, as I note, Rev. 7:1. This place must necessarily be joined with the end of chapter 12 and be applied unto the just understanding thereof. This chapter hath two parts, one of the dragon overcome, unto verse 10, the other of the resurrection and last judgment unto the end of the chapter. The history of the dragon is double: First of the first victory after which he was bound by Christ unto verse 6. The second is of the last victory, whereby he has thrown down into everlasting punishment, thence unto verse 10. This first history happened in the first time of the Christian Church, when the dragon thrown down from heaven by Christ, went about to molest the new birth of the Church in the earth, Rev. 12:17, 18. For which cause I gave warning, that this story of the Dragon must be annexed unto that place.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–10 1 And I saw an angel come down from…
1 And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
Ver. 1. And I saw an angd] Constantine the Great, the Church’s male child, Rev 12:5.
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Having the key] Not that key, Rev 9:1, but another.
A great chain] The succession of Christian emperors.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–10 The description of this angel can agree to none…
The description of this angel can agree to none but Christ, or one that exerciseth a power by delegation from him: for, Rev 1:18, it is he who hath the power of hell and death; and it is he who alone is stronger than the devil, which must be supposed to him that binds him, or we must think the devil much tamer than he is.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 7 This chapter begins with a fresh and glorious vision…
This chapter begins with a fresh and glorious vision which St. John had of an angel’s descending from heaven, to bind Satan for a thousand years; and herein we have observable,
1. The person binding, the angel of the covenant, Christ Jesus (for he only has the keys of the bottomless pit, of hell, and of death, Rev 1:18. This angel is here said to come down from heaven, and with a great chain in his hand, denoting his omnipotent power and sovereignty over Satan, and his ability to restrain him.
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Observe, 2. The person bound, Satan; where mark, that he is set forth here by five names, he is called the Dragon, the Serpent, the Old Serpent, the Devil, and Satan.
And note, Christ’s power is set forth in as many terms as the devil has titles, he is said to lay hold on him, to bind him, to cast him into the bottomless pit, to shut him in, or seal him up for a thousand years, that is, to restrain him and render him incapable of doing such mischief to the world as he had done before.
Observe, 3. What we are to understand by Christ’s binding Satan: some thereby do understand Christ’s overthrowing the power of the devil in the heathen world; his casting down those strong holds of Satan, to wit, ignorance, superstition, idolatry, and lying oracles, by the light and power of the gospel, preached among the Gentiles; his curbing of Satan, that he should no more cozen the world with heathenish delusions as he had done.
Others understand this binding of Satan to be after the destruction of antichrist; when the Jews shall be converted, and there shall follow a quiet and peaceable state of the church for a long time, styled here a thousand years; during which time Satan shall be bound, and there shall be no molestation from him.
From the whole learn, That be the devil never so devilish, Christ has power to overpower him. Christ has a great chain in his hand to bind Satan: intimating, that how mighty and malicious soever Satan is, Christ has him as a dog in a chain.
But observe a little, how Christ’s power meets with and masters Satan’s power: the devil carries power in his name, he is called a dragon; in his nature, as being an angel; in his numbers, which are numberless: but Christ overpowereth him, so that he cannot do his own will without him; he bound him in the execution of his malice, though his malice be boundless.
Satan is bound in a double chain, in a chain of justice, and in a chain of providence; he cannot move a foot either to tempt or trouble us, without a permission from Christ.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 We have here, I. A prophecy of the binding…
We have here, I. A prophecy of the binding of Satan for a certain term of time, in which he should have much less power and the church much more peace than before. The power of Satan was broken in part by the setting up of the gospel kingdom in the world; it was further reduced by the empire's becoming Christian; it was yet further broken by the downfall of the mystical Babylon; but still this serpent had many heads, and, when one is wounded, another has life remaining in it. Here we have a further limitation and diminution of his power. Observe, 1. To whom this work of binding Satan is committed - to an angel from heaven. It is very probable that this angel is no other than the Lord Jesus Christ; the description of him will hardly agree with any other. He is one who has power to bind the strong man armed, to cast him out, and to spoil his goods; and therefore must be stronger than he. 2. The means he makes use of in this work: he has a chain and a key, a great chain to bind Satan, and the key of the prison in which he was to be confined. Christ never wants proper powers and instruments to break the power of Satan, for he has the powers of heaven and the keys of hell. 3. The execution of this work, Rev 20:2, Rev 20:3. (1.) He laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil, and Satan. Neither the strength of the dragon, nor the subtlety of the serpent, was sufficient to rescue him out of the hands of Christ; he caught hold, and kept his hold. And, (2.) He cast him into the bottomless pit, cast him down with force, and with a just vengeance, to his own place and prison, from which he had been permitted to break out, and disturb the churches, and deceive the nations; now he is brought back to that prison, and there laid in chains. (3.) He is shut up, and a seal set upon him. Christ shuts, and none can open; he shuts by his power, seals by his authority; and his lock and seal even the devils themselves cannot break open. (4.) We have the term of this confinement of Satan - a thousand years, after which he was to be loosed again for a little season. The church should have a considerable time of peace and prosperity, but all her trials were not yet over.
II. An account of the reign of the saints for the same space of time in which Satan continued bound (Rev 20:4-6), and here observe,
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1. Who those were that received such honour - those who had suffered for Christ, and all who had faithfully adhered to him, not receiving the mark of the beast, nor worshipping his image; all who had kept themselves clear of pagan and papal idolatry.
2. The honour bestowed upon them. (1.) They were raised from the dead, and restored to life. This may be taken either literally or figuratively; they were in a civil and political sense dead, and had a political resurrection; their liberties and privileges were revived and restored. (2.) Thrones, and power of judgment, were given to them; they were possessed of great honour, and interest, and authority, I suppose rather of a spiritual than of a secular nature. (3.) They reigned with Christ a thousand years. Those who suffer with Christ shall reign with Christ; they shall reign with him in his spiritual and heavenly kingdom, in a glorious conformity to him in wisdom, righteousness, and holiness, beyond what had been known before in the world. This is called the first resurrection, which none but those who have served Christ and suffered for him shall be favoured with. As for the wicked, they shall not be raised up and restored to their power again, till Satan be let loose; this may be called a resurrection, as the conversion of the Jews is said to be life from the dead.
3. The happiness of these servants of God is declared. (1.) They are blessed and holy, Rev 20:6. None can be blessed but those that are holy; and all that are holy shall be blessed. These were holy as a sort of first-fruits to God in this spiritual resurrection, and as such blessed by him. (2.) They are secured from the power of the second death. We know something of what the first death is, and it is awful; but we know not what this second death is. It must be much more dreadful; it is the death of the soul, eternal separation from God. The Lord grant we may never know what it is by experience. Those who have had experience of a spiritual resurrection are saved from the power of the second death.
III. An account of the return of the church's troubles, and another mighty conflict, very sharp, but short and decisive. Observe, 1. The restraints laid for a long time on Satan are at length taken off. While this world lasts, Satan's power in it will not be wholly destroyed; it may be limited and lessened, but he will have something still to do for the disturbance of the people of God. 2. No sooner is Satan let loose than he falls to his old work, deceiving the nations, and so stirring them up to make a war with the saints and servants of God, which they would never do if he had not first deceived them. They are deceived both as to the cause they engage in (they believe it to be a good cause when it is indeed a very bad one), and as to the issue: they expect to be successful, but are sure to lose the day. 3. His last efforts seem to be the greatest. The power now permitted to him seems to be more unlimited than before. He had now liberty to beat up for his volunteers in all the four quarters of the earth, and he raised a mighty army, the number of which was as the sand of the sea, Rev 20:8. 4. We have the names of the principal commanders in this army under the dragon - Gog and Magog. We need not be too inquisitive as to what particular powers are meant by these names, since the army was gathered from all parts of the world. These names are found in other parts of scripture. Magog we read of in Gen 10:2. He was one of the sons of Japheth, and peopled the country called Syria, from which his descendants spread into many other parts. Of Gog and Magog together we only read in Eze 38:2, a prophecy whence this in Revelation borrows many of its images. 5. We have the march and military disposition of this formidable army (Rev 20:9.): They went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city, that is, the spiritual Jerusalem, in which the most precious interests of the people of God are lodged, and therefore to them a beloved city. The army of the saints is described as drawn forth out of the city, and lying under the walls of it, to defend it; they were encamped about Jerusalem: but the army of the enemy was so much superior to that of the church that they compassed them and their city about. 6. You have an account of the battle, and the issue of this war: Fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured the enemy. Thus the ruin of Gog and Magog is foretold (Eze 38:22), I will rain upon him and upon his bands an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, and fire and brimstone. God would, in an extraordinary and more immediate manner, fight this last and decisive battle for his people, that the victory might be complete and the glory redound to himself. 7. The doom and punishment of the grand enemy, the devil: he is now cast into hell, with his two great officers, the beast and the false prophet, tyranny and idolatry, and that not for any term of time, but to be there tormented night and day, for ever and ever.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–10 And I saw an angel come down from heaven,....…
And I saw an angel come down from heaven,.... All Christ's enemies, and Satan's instruments being removed, the devil is left alone, and only stands in the way of Christ's kingdom; and what will be done to him, and how he will be in the issue disposed of, this vision gives an account: by the "angel" John saw, is not to be understood Constantine the great; for though he is the man child that was taken up to God, and his throne, being advanced to the empire, yet he cannot, with that propriety, be said to come down from heaven; and though he vanquished the Heathen emperors, in which the dragon presided, and cast Paganism out of the empire, by which the devil ruled in it, yet the binding of Satan is another kind of work, and seems too great for him; and besides, did not take place in his time, as will be seen hereafter: nor is an apostle, or a minister of the Gospel intended; such are indeed called angels in this book, and may be said to come down from heaven, because they have their commission from thence; and particularly the apostles had the keys of the kingdom of heaven, but not the key of the bottomless pit; and a chain and system of Gospel truths, which they made good use of for the establishing of Christ's kingdom, and weakening of Satan's, but not such a chain as is here meant; and they had the power of binding and loosing, or of declaring things lawful or unlawful, but not of binding and loosing of Satan; nor was he bound in the apostolic age: nor is one of the ministering spirits, or a deputation of angels designed; for though Christ will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, and will make use of them, both to gather together his elect, and to cast the wicked into the lake of fire, yet not to bind Satan; but the Lord Jesus Christ himself is this angel, who is the angel of God's presence, and of the covenant; and who is in this book called an angel, Rev 7:2 to whom all the characters here well agree, and to whom the work of binding Satan most properly belongs; for who so fit to do it, or so capable of it, as the seed of the woman, that has bruised serpent's head, or as the Son of God, who was manifested to destroy the works of the devil, yea, to destroy him himself; and who dispossessed multitudes of devils from the bodies of men, and is the strong man armed that dislodges Satan from the souls of men, and is the same with Michael, who drove him from heaven, and cast him out from thence before, Rev 12:7. And his coming down from heaven is not to be understood of his incarnation, or of his coming from thence by the assumption of human nature; for Satan was not bound by him then, as will be seen hereafter; but of his second coming, which will be from heaven, where he now is, and will be local, visible, and personal: of no other coming of his does this book speak, as seen by John, or as future; nor will the order of this vision, after the ruin of the beast and false prophet, admit of any other.
Having the key of the bottomless pit: the abyss or deep, the same out of which the beast ascended, Rev 11:7. And the key of this becomes no hand so well as his who has the keys of hell and death, Rev 1:18 who has all power in heaven and in earth, and has the power of hell, of opening and shutting it at his pleasure, which is signified by this phase; see Rev 9:1. The Ethiopic version reads, "the key of the sun", where some have thought hell to be; and yet the same version renders the word, the deep, in Rev 20:3.
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And a great chain in his hand; the key in one hand, and the chain in another; by which last is meant, not any material chain, with which spirits cannot be bound, nor indeed sometimes bodies possessed by evil spirits, Mar 5:3 but the almighty power of Christ, which he will now display in binding Satan faster and closer than ever.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1–10 And I saw an angel decending out of heaven…
And I saw an angel decending out of heaven - Coming down with a commission from God. Jesus Christ himself overthrew the beast: the proud dragon shall be bound by an angel; even as he and his angels were cast out of heaven by Michael and his angels. Having the key of the bottomless pit - Mentioned before, chap. ix, 1. And a great chain in his hand - The angel of the bottomless pit was shut up therein before the beginning of the first woe. But it is now first that Satan, after he had occasioned the third woe, is both chained and shut up.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–10 An angel binds Satan a thousand years, and shuts…
CHAPTER XX.
An angel binds Satan a thousand years, and shuts him up in the
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bottomless pit, 1-3.
They who were beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, who have
part in the first resurrection, and shall reign with Christ
a thousand years, 4-6.
When the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out
of his prison, shall go forth and deceive the nations, and
shall gather Gog and Magog from the four corners of the earth,
7, 8.
These shall besiege the holy city; but fire shall come down
from heaven and consume them, and they and the devil be cast
into a lake of fire, 9, 10.
The great white throne, and the dead, small and great, standing
before God, and all judged according to their works, 11, 12.
The sea, death, and hades, give up their dead, and are
destroyed; and all not found in the book of life are cast into
the lake of fire, 13-15.
NOTES ON CHAP. XX.
Verse 1. An angel came down from heaven] One of the executors of the Divine justice, who receives criminals, and keeps them in prison, and delivers them up only to be tried and executed.
The key of the prison and the chain show who he is; and as the chain was great, it shows that the culprit was impeached of no ordinary crimes.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 7 Rev 20:1-3. And I saw an angel — An…
Rev 20:1-3. And I saw an angel — An especial minister of Providence; come down from heaven — With a commission from God; having the key of the bottomless pit — Invested with power to open or to shut it; see on Rev 9:1; and a great chain in his hand — Emblematical of his power to perform the work here assigned him. And he laid hold on the dragon — Who, after the destruction of the beast and of the false prophet, (to whom he had delegated his power,) still remained; that old serpent — That ancient enemy of the human race, who, in the form of a subtle serpent, deceived the first parents of mankind, and brought sin and death into the world, with an incalculable train of evils attendant on them; who is the Devil — The malicious and false accuser of God’s saints, as the word διαβολος, so rendered, signifies; and Satan — The grand adversary both of God and man; and bound him a thousand years — That is, at least one thousand literal years; during which the light of the gospel shall be diffused through all the world, and the reign of truth and righteousness be established universally among men. “I think,” says Doddridge, “we must despair of being able to interpret any passage of Scripture upon the plainest principle of reason, if this do not signify that there shall be such a period as this, in which Satan shall be remarkably restrained, and the Christian interest shall prevail. But whether the one thousand years are here to be taken literally, as is most probable; or whether here [as elsewhere in this book] each day is put for a year, and consequently the whole period be three hundred and sixty thousand years, I will not pretend to determine. This thought has been very lately started by an ingenious and worthy person, who, I doubt not, hath intended the service of Christianity; though I am very apprehensive he has failed in some of the mediums by which he has endeavoured to prove this point.” And cast him into the bottomless pit — His infernal prison; afterward he is cast into the lake of fire; and shut him up therein, and set a seal upon him — These are strong figures, to show the certain, strict, and severe restraint which he shall be laid under; that he might deceive the nations no more — During this whole period. One benefit only is here expressed as resulting from the confinement of Satan; but how many and great blessings are implied! For the grand enemy and opposer of truth and righteousness being removed, the kingdom of God holds on its uninterrupted course among the nations; and the great mystery of God, so long foretold, is at length fulfilled — Namely, when the beast and false prophet are destroyed, and Satan bound. This fulfilment approaches nearer and nearer, and contains things of the utmost importance, the knowledge of which becomes every day more distinct and easy. In the mean time, it is highly necessary to guard against the present rage and subtlety of the devil; remembering that the events which are to precede the binding of him, and the commencing of these one thousand years, are awful, and shortly to be expected, one after another, namely, the calamities implied in the vintage, (Rev 14:18,) the pouring out of the last three vials, the judgment of Babylon, the last raging of the beast and false prophet, and their destruction. How great things are these! and how short the time! What is needful for us? Wisdom, patience, faithfulness, watchfulness. Surely this is not a time for us to settle upon our lees. This, if it be rightly understood, will not be an acceptable message to the wise, the mighty, the honourable of this world. Yet that which is to be done shall be done: there is no counsel against the Lord. After that he must be loosed — So does the mysterious wisdom of God permit; for a little season — For a small time, comparatively: though, upon the whole, it cannot be very short, because the things that are to be transacted therein (see Rev 20:8-9) must take up a considerable space.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–10 And I saw an angel come down from heaven…
And I saw an angel come down from heaven - Compare the notes on Rev 10:1. He does not say whether this angel had appeared to him before, but the impression is rather that it was a different one. The whole character of the composition of the book leads us to suppose that different angels were employed to make these communications to John, and that, in fact, in the progress of things disclosed in the book, he had contact with a considerable number of the heavenly inhabitants. The scene that is recorded here occurred after the destruction of the beast and the false prophet Rev 19:18-21, and therefore, according to the principles expressed in the explanation of the previous chapters, what is intended to be described here will take place after the final destruction of the papal and Muhammedan powers.
Having the key of the bottomless pit - See the notes on Rev 1:18; Rev 9:1. The fact that he has the key of that underworld is designed to denote here, that he can fasten it on Satan so that it shall become his prison.
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And a great chain in his hand - With which to bind the dragon, Rev 20:2. It is called great because of the strength of him that was to be bound. The chain only appears to have been in his hand. Perhaps the key was suspended to his side.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On v2 And bound him for a thousand years. I shall…
And bound him for a thousand years. I shall give the reader an abridgment of what St. Augustine has left us on this chapter, in this 20th book de Civ. Dei [The City of God]. From the 5th to the 16th chap. (t. vii. p. 578, et seq.) he treats upon these difficulties: What is meant by the first and second resurrection; by the binding and chaining up of the devil; by the thousand years that the saints reign with Christ; by the first and second death; by Gog and Magog, &c. As to the first resurrection, chap. vi. he takes notice on the 5th verse, that resurrection [1] in the Gospels, and in St. Paul, is applied not only to the body but also to the soul; and the second resurrection, which is to come, is that of the bodies: that there is also a death of the soul, which is by sin; and that the second death is that of soul and body by eternal damnation: that both bad and good shall rise again in their bodies. On those words, (ver. 6) Blessed is he that hath part in the first resurrection; in these the second death hath no power. Such, saith he, (chap. ix.) as have risen from sin, and have remained in that resurrection of the soul, shall never be liable to the second death, which is damnation. Cap. vii. p. 580, he says that some Catholics not understanding rightly the first resurrection, have been led into ridiculous fables,[2] and this by the interpretation which they put on the thousand years; as if the first resurrection implied a resurrection of the bodies of the martyrs and saints, who should live on the earth with Christ for a thousand years before the general resurrection, in all manner of delights. This was the opinion of those called Millenarians: this, saith he, might seem tolerable in some measure,[3] if taken for spiritual delights, (for we ourselves were once in these sentiments) but if for carnal pleasures, it can only be believed by carnal men. He then expounds what may be understood by the binding and chaining of the devil for a thousand years (Cap. vii. & viii, p. 581) that the thousand years, meaning a long time, may signify all the time from Christ’s first coming[4] to his second at the end of the world, and to the last short persecution under antichrist. The devil is said to be bound, that is, his power much lessened and restrained, in comparison of the great and extensive power he had over all nations before Christ’s incarnation; not but that he still tempts many,[5] and raiseth persecutions, which always turn to their greater good; and that towards the end of the world he shall be let loose, as it were, for a short time, and permitted with his infernal spirits to exercise his malice against mankind, to try the patience of the elect, and to shew the power of God’s grace, by which his faithful servants shall triumph over the devil. (N. B.) What St. Augustine adds divers times in these chapters: "Let no one," says he, "imagine[6] that even during that short time, there shall be no Church of Christ on the earth: God forbid: even when the devil shall be let loose, he shall not be able to seduce the Church." Cap. ix, p. 586, he expounds those words, (ver. 4-5) I saw the souls of them that were beheaded....and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years....this is the first resurrection: i.e. the first resurrection is while the devil is chained up for the space of a thousand years. He takes notice that the present state of the Church is many times called the kingdom of God, and that the Church of Christ reigns now with Christ, both in the living saints, and those who are dead, in the souls of the martyrs, and of others, who have lived and died piously, now reign with Christ, not yet in their bodies,[7] but their souls reign with him. On those words of the 4th verse: who had not adored the beast, nor his image, nor received his mark, he only gives this exposition, as agreeable to the Christian faith, that by the beast may be understood the multitude of wicked sinners in general, and the image of the beast [8] those who are of the Church in outward appearance and profession only, and not by their works. When it is said (ver. 5) that the rest of the dead lived not till the thousand years were finished: they lived not, says he, as to their souls, when they should have lived; and therefore not being happy in heaven, when their bodies shall rise, it shall not be to life, but to judgment and damnation, which is the second death. Cap. xi, he expounds the 7th and 8th verses, where it is said that Satan shall be loosed....and seduce the nations which are over the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog,[9] and shall gather them together to battle. This, says St. Augustine, will be the last persecution at the approach of the day of judgment, which the whole city, or the whole Church of Christ dispersed through the universe, will suffer from the whole city of the devil. Neither need Gog and Magog be taken for a particular[10] barbarous people, but such as are dispersed in a manner in every nation, and who shall then break out by the instigation of Satan into an open hatred and persecution against the faithful servants of God; as it is said, (ver. 8.) they ascended upon the breadth of the earth, and surrounded the camp of the saints, where we cannot literally understand one camp, one city, or one place, but the Church every where dispersed. Cap. xii, he expounds the 9th verse, where he takes fire to signify, metaphorically, the firm resistance and constancy of the good, and the fire [11] of their zeal, which devoured as it were the wicked; or we may understand with others, the temporal fire of God’s judgments in this world against the wicked, but not the last eternal fire; because the eternal fire comes not down from heaven but the wicked are cast into it below. Cap. xiii, he teacheth that the last persecution[12] of antichrist, here mentioned, shall but last three years and six months; i.e. a little while. Cap. xiv and xv, he expounds the 10th and following verse, of the devil being cast into the lake of fire, after the last persecution of antichrist. By the beast he understands, as before, the city or multitude of all the wicked; and by the false prophet, either antichrist or the outward appearance of faith in them that have none. Then follows the last judgment, where it is said that the books are opened, and also that another book was opened. By the first book, may be understood men and their consciences; and by the other book, the book of life, that[13] of eternal predestination. Thus far S. Augustine, where we see that he delivers the common Catholic doctrine, that by the thousand years, so often mentioned in this chapter, he understands all that time in which the souls of the martyrs, and of all other saints, reign happy with Christ in heaven, till after the general resurrection they receive a full and complete happiness, both as to soul and body. A false exposition of these thousand years gave occasion to the mistake, the error, and heresy of those called the Millenarians, which Mede and Dr. W. have followed. Papias, who lived soon after, or perhaps with St. John, was the chief promoter of this mistake; a man, says Eusebius, of "little judgment and capacity,"[14] who misconstrued the discourses which he heard. He was followed by divers writers in the second, third, and fourth century, who did not hold with Cerinthus and his followers, that the saints should rise before the general resurrection, and reign with Christ on earth for a thousand years in all manner of sensual pleasures; but in spiritual delights, in the city of Jerusalem, built anew after that glorious manner described in the next chapter. Now though this opinion had several considerable abettors, of which I find these seven: Papias, St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenæus, Tertullian, Nepos, (a bishop, in Egypt; in Eusebius, lib. xii. chap. xxiv.) Victorinus Petabionensis, Lactantius, and Severus Sulpitius: yet were there always other learned Catholic writers who rejected it as a fable. Of this number was Caius, a priest, at Rome, about the end of the second age [century]; Origen, in his prologue on the Canticles; St. Denys, of Alexandria, who in the third age [century] wrote to confute Nepos; (see Eusebius, lib. vii. History of the Church, chap. xxiv., who treats it as a fable ) St. Basil,[15] who calls it an old wife’s tale, and a Jewish fiction, Epist. 293; St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 52; St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, Philastrius, Theodoret, who place this opinion among the heresies and heretical fables: so that this could never be looked upon as the constant doctrine and tradition of the Church. The bishop of Meaux takes notice, that Mede either mistook or falsified the text of St. Justin,[16] who, in his Dialogue with Tryphon, holds that opinion of a thousand years reign; but adds, "I also told you, that many who are Christians of pious and sound sentiments, do not own this to be true." Thus we read in the Greek, as well as in the Latin translation: but Mr. Mede quite changes the sense, by adding a negative in this manner; but many who are not of this pure and holy doctrine, &c. We may observe that St. Justin says in the next page, that they who own not the resurrection of the body, and say that souls go to heaven without any future resurrection, are not to be accounted Christians, but are to be looked upon as Sadducees and unbelievers. Which is very true. And he adds, that he, and others who think right with him, know that there will be a resurrection of the flesh, and a rebuilding of Jerusalem for a thousand years, which St. Justin himself judge grounded on the prophets, Isaias, Ezechiel, &c. So that not to make St. Justin contradict himself, he mentions three opinions: the first is the heresy of those who absolutely denied the future resurrection of the dead: these were not Christians, but unbelievers, Sadducees, &c. The second was of those who held that the martyrs and saints should rise and reign for a thousand years in their bodies on the earth; this, which was his own opinion, he calls the right and true doctrine. But thirdly, he does not condemn those pious Christians who, as he had said before, disowned this thousand years reign, for this would be to contradict himself. (Witham) --- In the above chapter, what man can reflect without trembling, that the devil has the rage of a dragon, the cunning of an old serpent, the malice of a calumniator, and that he is a most implacable enemy? On the other hand, what man is there that does not feel consolation in the reflection, that Jesus Christ has vanquished this savage fiend, and bound him in fetters, by limiting the exercise of his rage and malice? Some understand this chaining of the dragon of the reign of Constantine, and particularly after the defeat of Licinius; (see above, [Apocalypse] chap. xii. 18.) and the thousand years of the intermediate period between Constantine and antichrist, when the devil will again be let loose, but for a short time, only three years and a half. (Bible de Vence) --- Bound him, &c. The power of Satan has been very much abridged by the passion of Christ; for a thousand years; that is, for the whole time of the new testament, but especially from the time of the destruction of Babylon or pagan Rome, till the new efforts of Gog and Magog against the Church, towards the end of the world. During which time the souls of the martyrs and saints live and reign with Christ in heaven, in the first resurrection, which is that of the soul to the life of glory, as the second resurrection will be that of the body, at the day of the general judgment. (Challoner)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
St. Augustine, chap. vi. Prima animarum est.
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Chap. vii, p. 580. In quasdam riduculas fabulas.
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P. 581. Utcunque tolerabilis.
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Mille annos pro annis omnibus hujus sæculi posuit, &c. Chap. viii, p. 583. A primo adventu Christi usque ad finem sæculi.
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Chap. viii, p. 583. Alligatio diaboli est non permitti exercere totam tentationem, &c.
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Ne quis existimet eo ipso parvo tempore, quo solvetur diabolus, in hac terra ecclesiam non futuram, &c. Tales erunt, cum quibus ei belligerandum est, ut vinci tanto ejus impetu, insidiisque non possint, &c.
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Chap. ix, p. 586. Quamvis ergo cum suis corporibus nondum, jam tamen eorum animæ regnant cum eo.
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P. 587. Quæ sit ista bestia....non abhorret a fide recta, ut ipsa impia civitas intelligatur, et populus infidelium contrarius populo fideli, et civitati Dei. Imago vero simulatio ejus mihi videtur....fallaci imagine Christiani.
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Chap xi, p. 589. De Gog et Magog: hæc erit novissima persecutio, novissimo imminente judicio, quam sancta ecclesia toto terrarum orbe patietur, universa scilicet civitas Christi ab universa diaboli civitate.
[10] Gentes istæ, quas appellat Gog et Magog: non sic sunt accipiendæ tanquam sint aliqui in aliqua parte terrarum barbari constituti....non utique ad unum locum venisse, vel venturi esse significati sunt, &c.
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Chap xii, p. 589. Bene intelligitur ignis de cælo de ipsa firmitate sanctorum, qua non cessuri sunt sævientibus, quoniam non poterunt attrahere in partes antichristi sanctos Christi.
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Chap xiii. Hæc persecutio novissima, quæ futura est ab antichristo (p. 590) tribus annis et sex mensibus erit....tempus exiguum, &c.
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Chap. xv, p. 593. Prædestinationem significat eorum, quibus æterna dabitur vita, &c.
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Eusebius (lib. 3, chap. xxxix) says of Papias, Greek: omikr[] on ton noun; and that he followed Greek: muthikotera.
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St. Basil (tom. 3, p. 284) says, Greek: graiodeis muthous.
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St. Justin, (Ed. Joachimi Perionii, p. 62.) multis autum eorum, etiam qui integræ piæque sententiæ Christianæ sunt, hæc incognita (seu non agnita) esse tibi exposui. In the Greek of Rob. Stephen, out of a manuscript in the king’s library, in the year 1551, p. 88, Greek: pollous d au, kai ton tes katharas, kai eusebous onton christianon gnomes, touto me gnorizein, esemena soi.
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George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain On v1 Revelation Chapter 20
Revelation Chapter 20
We now come, evil power having been set aside, to the exercise of judicial authority in peace; and this is conferred on the saints. The prophet does not merely see the thrones as set in Dan 7:1-28., but sitters on them too. Besides all to whom judgment is given in general, two special classes are mentioned, because they might seem to be too late, or to have lost their part: those beheaded (after theassembly was gone, for it is the Revelation-period we have to do with) for the witness of Jesus; and those who had not worshiped the beast. (Compare Rev 6:9-11; Rev 13:15.) These, as well as previously departed saints, had their part in living and reigning with Christ a thousand years. But those who were not Christ’s, the rest of the dead did not live again till the thousand years were over. [20] These were finally delivered from the second death. The first death they had undergone, the natural wages of sin, but in faithfulness; in the second death, the final judgment against sin, they would have no part. It could have no power over them. On the contrary, they had special relationship with God and Christ, they were priests of God and of Christ, and would reign with Him a thousand years. They also are priests and kings. Note how God and Christ are here united in one thought, as continually in the writings of John. Thus the beast and the false prophet are in the lake of fire, their armies slain, and Satan bound in the abyss, and the risen saints are priests to God and Christ, reigning with Christ a thousand years. The details and effects, mark, are not given here. The object is to give the place of the saints, and especially of the sufferers, during the time of this book. The rest come in as a general fact, there were sitters on thrones of judgment; but the faithful of the prophecy are specially mentioned.
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When the thousand years are finished, Satan is let loose again. He comes up on the earth, but he never gets up to heaven again. But the nations are tested by his temptation. Not even having seen Christ and enjoyed the fruits of His glory-no mere means can secure the heart of man, if it is to be depended upon; and men fall, in number as the sand of the sea, into Satan’s hands as soon as tempted; enjoying blessing, where unfaithfulness would have been present loss (perhaps cutting off) and there was nothing to tempt them, but unfaithful as soon as they are tempted, as soon as the heart is tried. It was the last and needed trial of man; needed because they could not have finally enjoyed God with natural hearts, and the natural heart had not been tested where present blessing was on the side of owning a present, visible, glorious Christ. The deceived multitude, not limited now to a third of the earth or a special prophetic district but taking in the breadth of the earth, went up against the camp of the saints, and surrounded it and the beloved city, Jerusalem. It is remarkable here, there is no special presence of Christ amongst them. They are left apparently to be surrounded by their enemies. The Lord has allowed all this testing separation of personal faithfulness. Had He appeared of course these hostile crowds could not have come up, nor would the thorough trial of the heart have proved the faithfulness of the saints, who would not follow the seductions of Satan. They are pressed upon and surrounded by the enemy, but faithful. Once this separation and full testing had been accomplished, God’s judgment fell on them from heaven, and destroyed them. The devil was then cast into the lake of fire, where the beast and the false prophet were already, where they are tormented for ever and ever.
This closed the exercise of wrath, of the destruction of hostile power-a wondrous scene-that God should have enemies in this world! Now judicial power, as such, seated in its own right, comes in. It may be remarked, that the exercise of this on the quick, forms no part of the contents of this book. The hostile power of the beast was destroyed by Him who judges and makes war, the heavenly saints having been taken to glory. The crowds of apostates at the end of the thousand years are destroyed by fire from heaven. But the judgment of Mat 25:1-46 is not found here, unless there be a possible connection with the judgment of Rev 20:4.
There now comes the judgment of the dead. There no coming here. A great white throne is set; judgment is carried on according to the purity of God’s nature. It was no dealing with the earth, or the power of evil, but with souls. Heaven and earth-all mere scenes of judgment-disappear. The secrets of men’s hearts are judged by Him who knows them all. Heaven and earth flee away before the face of Him that sat on the throne, and the dead, small and great, stand before the throne. Judgment was according to works, as it was written in the books of record. Still another element was brought into view. Sovereign grace alone had saved according to the purpose of God. [21] There was a book of life. Whosoever was not written there was cast into the lake of fire. But it was the finally closing and separating scene for the whole race of men and this world. And though they were judged every man according to his works, yet sovereign grace only had delivered any; and whoever was not found in grace’s book was cast into the lake of fire. The sea gave up the dead in it; death and hades, the dead in them. And death and hades were put an end to for ever by the divine judgment. The heaven and earth passed away, but they were to be revived; but death and hades never. There was for them only divine destruction and judgment. They are looked at as the power of Satan. He has the power of death and the gates of hades; and hence these are for ever destroyed judicially. They will never have power again. They are personified; but of course there is no question of tormenting them or of punishment: when the devil himself is cast in, there is. But death was not then destroyed; for the wicked dead had not been raised for judgment. Now they had; and the last enemy is destroyed. The force of the image, I doubt not, is that all the dead now judged (the whole contents of hades, in whom the power of death had been) were cast into the lake of fire, so that death and hades, which had no existence but in their state, were entirely and judicially ended by their being cast in. The saints had long before passed out of them; but they subsisted in the wicked. Now these were, consequent on the judgment of the white throne, cast into the lake of fire-the second death. The limit and measure of escape was the book of life.
Footnotes for Revelation Chapter 20
20: It may be noted here that, according to the true reading, the living and reigning is certainly resurrection. “The rest of the dead lived not until,” & etc.; so that it is clearly used here for resurrection, as the following words confirm: “This is the first resurrection.”
21: Thus purpose and man’s responsibility are never confounded, but, from the two trees of the garden on, are in juxtaposition; life brought into connection with responsibility in the law, responsibility being put first, and thus proof given that man cannot stand before God; but the question is solved only in Christ, who bore our sins, died for us to sin, and is life. Counsels and promise of life in Christ come first, then responsibility in the creature on earth, then grace making good counsels, in righteousness, through the cross.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv6, 9 Section Eighteenth
SPECIAL DOCTRINO-ETHICAL AND HOMILETICAL NOTES (ADDENDUM)
Section Eighteenth
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Third or General End-Judgment. Judgment upon Satan and all his Associates. The Second Death. a. The Heavenly Prognosis. (Rev_20:6-8)
General.—As we must distinguish between the elect, who have part in the first resurrection, and the general throng of the blessed, we have also to distinguish between the blossom of the earth and of the nations, constituting the Millennial Kingdom, the eschatological οἰκουμένη, and the terrestrial orb in general and its masses of peoples. It is a prophecy corresponding with the most profound anthropology that the rudest constituents of humanity shall at last, at the instigation of Satan, instinctively band themselves together for an assault upon the City of God. The lineaments of this anticipation are distinctly expressed in the passages quoted from Ezekiel. From an ethical point of view, it is the fundamental idea of this anticipation that evil shall, after the annihilation of all its idealistic illusions, make one last attack upon the Kingdom of God, with the convulsive movement of pure brutality, savageness, hostility to, and rebellion against, the holy. From an ethnographical point of view, the remoter heathen Orient appears, in antithesis to the nearer theocratic Orient, as the natural lodgment of the elements for such a final struggle. Already the East has frequently threatened the civilized world of anterior Asia and Europe with its terrors, by its great military incursions. There fanaticism slumbers in millions,—in the diverse forms of Græco-Catholicism, Mohammedanism, and Paganism, the latter of which is further sub-divided into the opposite ground-forms of Brahmanism and Buddhism. Imagine a gigantic Oriental coalition, equipped with the most modern military instruments of the European world, its leaders inspired with the magic song of the three Apocalyptio frogs. In such a case, the ethically monstrous assault against the Church of God must have the aspect of a Titanic cosmical power;—the Divine cosmos, however, must also, infallibly, take upon itself an annihilating counter-agency.
Special.—[Rev_20:6.] Glory of the first resurrection. The summit of life is the first resurrection; the summit of death is the second death.—The true priestly domination in the Millennial Kingdom: 1. A domination of all the elect; 2. A domination with Christ.—[Rev_20:7.] Sublimity of God’s power in the final loosing of Satan.—Last form of evil on earth.
Rev_20:8. 1. The absolute majority in conflict against Christ; 2. Rude violence [might] in conflict against the consummate right of His Church; 3. The brutalized power of earth in an assault upon the spirit-kingdom of God from Heaven. Consummate irrationality in its hatred of the consummate Kingdom of light, love and life.—The serpent nature of evil in its last struggle.—The last struggle itself, the foretoken of its destruction.
Starke (Rev_20:8): Satan is the greatest rover; he goes to and fro, in order to seduce men and to do harm. (Job_1:7. In other words: Demonic evil ever and anon issues forth from its dark nothingness, without rule or system, but yet sympathetically, or rather in sympathetic antipathies, and consistently. Oneness in the Kingdom of God is based upon harmony in the Spirit; oneness in the kingdom of darkness is based upon a conspiracy for Antichristian purposes.)
Graeber (p. 357). [Rev_20:9.] And fire came down from Heaven. This figurative expression indicates that their ruin is brought about by a special event, sent by God, the saints themselves having no hand in the matter. This is described with more particularity, Eze_38:21-23.
[From M. Henry: Rev_20:6. None can be blessed but they that, are holy; and all that are holy shall be blessed.—From Bonar: Rev_20:6. The First Resurrection. 1. When is it to be? When the Lord comes the second time. (See 1Co_15:23; 1Th_4:16; 2Th_2:1). 2. Whom it is to consist of. This passage speaks only of the martyrs and the non-worshippers of the Beast; but other passages show that all His saints are to be partakers of this reward. Oneness with Christ now secures for us the glory of that day. 3. What it does for those who share it. It brings them (1) Blessedness. God only knows how much that word implies, as spoken by Him who cannot lie, who exaggerates nothing, and whose simplest words are His greatest. (2) Holiness. They are consecrated to God and purified, both outwardly and inwardly. (3) Preservation from, the second death. Their connection with death, in every sense, is done forever. (4) The possession of a heavenly priesthood. They are made priests unto God and Christ—both to the Father and the Son. Priestly nearness and access; priestly power and honor and service; priestly glory and dignity;—this is their recompense. (5) The possession of the kingdom.—Sinner, what is resurrection to bring to you?]
III. THIRD OR GENERAL END-JUDGMENT. JUDGMENT UPON SATAN AND ALL HIS COMPANY. THE SECOND DEATH
Rev_20:6-10
A.—HEAVENLY PROGNOSIS OF THE LAST GENERAL JUDGMENT
Rev_20:6-8
6Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on [over] such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and [ins. they] shall reign with him a [the]8 thousand years. 7And when the thousand years are expired [finished], Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, 8and shall go out to deceive [seduce or mislead (πλανῆσαι)] the nations which are in the four quarters [corners] of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to [the]9 battle [war]: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
SYNOPTICAL VIEW
The prophecies relative to the three judgments here taper, so to speak, to a point. The most detailed of these prophecies was that which concerned the Harlot; the prophecy concerning the Beast was couched in less ample terms; and this last prophecy of judgment is concentrated in a very little sketch, so that we can scarce perceive the articulations which separate one cycle from another, and divide the heavenly prognosis from the earth-picture. Nevertheless, the breaks in question are still to be found. The words of Rev_20:6 do indeed glance back to the thousand years; but this is, manifestly, in order to the introduction of the last Judgment, which brings with it the second death. Even within this diminutive judgment-picture, the antithesis is unmistakable. Rev_20:7-8 speak of the loosing of Satan and the seduction of Gog and Magog in the future tense. But with Rev_20:9 the Seer makes a historic presentation, in the prophetic preterite, of the fact which he has before predicted. The plan of the whole Book is, therefore, retained in this case also. The perspective brevity of this section testifies unmistakably to the canonical truth and chasteness of the description. For an apocalyptic fiction, the elaboration of this sombre picture of the last revolt of the heathen, the fiery judgment upon Satan, and the second death in the lake of fire, would have possessed the greatest charms. Our Prophet, however, gives only the few features that he has seen—gives them as he has seen them, darkly, in well-nigh figureless language. It cannot be said, however, that he is wearied, for soon after follows the picture of the perfected City of God, magnificently developed and vividly distinct.
With a beatitude relative to the sharers in the first resurrection, the perspective of the last judgment is opened. The participants in this resurrection are called blessed, as those whose lot is absolutely decided, who have passed their judgment and come forth from it as holy ones, forever consecrate to God. This retrospect is occasioned by the prospect of the second death as the doom of the third and last judgment. Over such the second death hath no authority. The second death (δεύτερος θάνατος) is damnation in the pool of fire, according to Rev_20:14 and Rev_21:8; not gradual dissolution and annihilation (Rothe). The term eternal death [Düsterdieck] is less explanatory of this mysterious judgment than the figurative expression, the pool of fire. It is a fellowship with all those who are in that condition of absolute irritation which is at the same time absolute stagnation, in endless ethical self-consumption and annihilation as a punishment for the persevering negation of God and the personal Kingdom of love. The opposite of this death-peril consists in the fact that the sharers in the first resurrection will be priests of God and of Christ. This priesthood, as absolute submission to God in blessedness in Him, stands contrasted with the unblest madness of the pool of fire; and, furthermore, it is perfect submission in reference to the economy of the Father as well as to the economy of redemption. They offer the whole creation, they offer the whole Church, with all the good things of them both, evermore to God and to Christ; and this is the condition whereby an eternal and ever-better possession of these good things is secured—a participation in the dominion of the Lord. Even in the Millennial Kingdom they shall reign with Christ.
Not in the vision form, but in prophetic discourse the Seer now announces the loosing of Satan after the thousand years. He shall be loosed out of his prison—not break out of it. In accordance with the determination of God, Satan, and with him all evil, must be thoroughly and completely judged. Hitherto judgment has been predominantly accomplished through instrumentalities. The historic judgment upon the Harlot was executed by the Beast, i. e., the preliminary hypocritical instance of evil has been judged by the perfect consistency of evil, in accordance with a very general historic law;—half-way-ness succumbs to consistency. Antichristian evil, as a spiritual power, has been judged by the spiritual effect of the personal appearance of Christ, by the terror of His σόξα and by the sword out of His mouth. In the end, however, Satan employs the means of resistance still afforded him by his creaturely strength, reviving in a convulsive struggle, in rebellion against God; and with the brutal opposition of consummate Satanity, corresponds the savage sense of strength of the heathen [nations] in the corners of the earth, who have withdrawn themselves from the sanctifying process of the eschatological economy (the new οἰκουμένη), aye, have hardened themselves under it, and have become, especially in their resentment against that heavenly order of things which oversways them, kindred in mind to Satan. It has been asked: whence come these countless heathen, since, according to Rev_19:21, Christ has slain the Antichristian host? But apart from the fact that He slew them with the breath of His mouth, i. e., morally annihilated them, which might not prevent a continuance of physical vegetation on their part, the terms employed, the heathen [nations] in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, afford sufficient explanation. Ezekiel prophesied that the people of God should, long after the more familiar anti-theocratic assaults, have to sustain an attack from the circle of the remotest barbaric Orient (Ezekiel 38, 39). This eagle-glance at the future, whose significance trains of Huns, Mongols, Tartars and Turks have already confirmed, could not be missing from our Apocalypse. The present prophecy is heralded in Rev_16:12. But whilst Ezekiel, in prophesying of Gog in the land of Magog, referred to distinct Asiatic peoples (see Düst., p. 552), John employs the terms as a universal symbol, in designation of all the barbarous peoples in the corners of the earth—so, however, that the distant Orient plays the principal part. The idea of these last heathen is precisely analogous to the churchly idea. In the earlier days of Christianity, the inhabitants of the villages (pagani) or of the heaths, far remote from the great centres of civilization, formed the remnants of the old world—remnants which were both unconverted and difficult of conversion. Thus the entire old world will leave its remnants in a moral, symbolical heathenism, which will surround the Kingdom of Christ not merely as a terrestrial, but also as a spiritual boundary. But the idea that Evil shall at last break out and incur judgment in such a final heathenish mutiny, in a brutal revolt, the stupidity of which is veiled by the innumerable force of the hosts therein concerned, is characteristic of the great Prophet, who sees far above and beyond the learning of the schools.
EXPLANATIONS IN DETAIL
Rev_20:6. Blessed and holy is he, etc.—As in the process of the formation of Christian character, the beatitudes of the righteousness of faith condition sanctification or the becoming holy, so in the condition of consummation, blessedness is still more decidedly the eternal source of the renewal of holiness. It is a remarkable fact that even Spinoza had a dim idea of this, that blessedness is itself a virtue and a condition of virtue. Even civic contentment has, in a limited degree, an ennobling influence. By holiness, eternal and complete consecratedness to God is here expressed.—Over such the second death, etc—They are beyond temptation, and cannot relapse into sin, and hence cannot fall under the fearful dominion of the second death.—The second death is, Rev_20:14, declared to be the judgment in the pool of fire: eternal agitation amidst the eternal frustration of plots and attempts: the specific demonic and Satanic suffering. “A dying and an inability to die,” ancient expositors were wont to say. The fact is here expressed that the Millennial Kingdom forms only a heavenly circle of culture of the new world within the old earth—in other words, that the heathen [nations], from whom the last rebellion proceeds, form an antithesis to God’s people of the first resurrection. The remains of the old humanity will occupy very much the same relation to the new humanity which the remains of the pre-Adamite creation occupy to the human world; although a general recognition of Christ, and, to this extent, the beginning of Christianity amongst all these peoples, is induced by Christ’s victory over Antichrist (Revelation 14). The general conversion of the heathen even precedes the Parousia of Christ. They shall be priests of God and of Christ.—Because they shall be priests, they shall also be co-regents with Christ, and being both throughout the thousand years, they appear unconditionally elevated above the perils of the last Satanic assault.
Rev_20:7. And when the thousand years are finished.—When the destination of the thousand years is fulfilled (ὅταν τελεσθῇ). Satan shall be loosed.—The obedience of the heathen [nations], their Christianity, their faithfulness, must finally undergo a fiery test, after they have long enough been spectators of the Heaven on earth, and enjoyed, in nature and grace, the blessings of the Parousia of Christ. For a similar purpose Satan was permitted to exercise his arts in the first Paradise, to tempt Job, Christ Himself, and His Apostles. Such is the Divine method for the testing and perfecting of the elect, the purification and sifting of the churches, the unveiling of the wicked in order to their judgment, and the inducement of the self-judgment of Satan, resulting in his dynamical destruction. Under this Divine economy, evil in abstracto is permitted fully to develop, as is also evil in concreto, in wicked individuals, in the fellowship of the wicked, in the father of liars.
Rev_20:8. And shall go out to seduce [or mislead] the nations [Lange: heathen].—“The difficulty occasioned by the statement that heathen peoples are here once more represented as going up to battle against the saints, after the destruction (Rev_19:21) of all peoples and kings that worshipped the Beast” (Düsterd.), is very simply solved by a distinction between the Antichristian host and the remaining world of peoples, particularly those under the Eastern kings—irrespective of the fact that it is doubtful whether the killing of the rest (Rev_19:21) should be taken literally. Vitringa calls attention to the fact “that the ἔθνη, Gog and Magog, dwell in the uttermost ends of the earth (Eze_38:15 and Rev_20:9).”10 Another difficulty, according to Düsterdieck, consists in the fact that foes belonging to this earthly life fight against the faithful who have part in the first resurrection. This will undoubtedly be a very foolish proceeding, but it will not on that account be improbable, as those who have passed through the resurrection dwell upon earth in bodily form. Dogs attack lions, beasts attack men, barbarians and savages attack civilized nations, the foes of Christ attack the Church of God;—all these are wars from motives of, sheer instinct, the rationality of which we have not to take upon ourselves to prove. In the antithesis of Cain and Abel, it was, in reality, the mortal who assaulted the immortal. Consider further “that these heathen peoples are seduced to battle against the saints by Satan himself directly.” Rev_16:13, it is affirmed, militates against this idea. That passage, however, rather gives an explanation of the manner in which we should conceive of the agitation of Satan. At first, as the red Dragon (Revelation 12), he had no such definite organs as at a later period (Revelation 13), and yet even then he could work by spiritual influences. And even though the Beast and the False Prophet are destroyed, the frogs which went forth from their mouths as well as from, the mouth of the Dragon, reminiscences of rancor, resentment and rage [Groll. Gram und Grimm], can be made effectual for the seduction of the heathen, primarily through their leaders. In the four corners of the earth.—Hengstenberg, in the interest of his exegesis, has very ingeniously taken the edge off of the four corners of the earth by striving to prove that the corners comprehend that which lies within them, and that hence the four corners of the earth denote the same ground as τὸ πλάτος τῆς γῆς (see his citations, vol. ii., 368 sq. [Eng. Trans.]). But allowing that the four corners might denote, by synecdoche, the complete totality of the land or the people, such a use of the term is entirely different from the present statement, that Satan shall go out to seduce the heathen in the four corners; and from the further statement that they went up upon the breadth of the earth. Gog and Magog.—The following questions arise here: 1. What ethnographical sense did the theocratic world attach to Gog and Magog? 2. How did Gog and Magog become, in the Old Testament, the symbol of the last foes of the theocratic Church of God? 3. How has the Apocalypse taken up this symbol and applied it in manifold forms? 4. How is the same idea reflected in Jewish tradition? [1.] In respect to Biblical ethnography, the name of Magog appears, by the side of Gomer, amongst the sons of Japhet, Gen_10:2; see Comm. on Genesis, p. 348 [Am. Ed.]. Josephus explains Magog as indicative of the Scythians. “Magog seems to be a collective name, denoting the sum of the peoples situate In Media and the Caucasian Mountains, concerning whom a vague report had reached the Hebrews, etc.” See Winer, Title Magog; Düsterdieck, Note on p. 552. Gog, according to Uhlemann, as there quoted, and others, means mountain; Magog the dwelling-place, or land of Gog. According to Ezekiel, eze38:2, the prince or the nation is called Gog, the land of the same being denominated Magog, which embraces Rosch,11 Meshech and Tubal (see the table of nations). [2.] In the Apocalypse of Ezekiel, the spirit of prophecy has, in accordance with a distinct ethical pre-supposition, arrived at the idea that the people of God shall, after all its conflicts with familiar anti-theocratic enemies, after its complete restoration, re-instatement and renewal, have to undergo one more last assault from the rude and brutal enmity of Eastern barbarian nations. These enemies are introduced by Ezekiel under the names of Gog and Magog. Hitzig [Commentar. zu Ezech., p. 288) thinks that the Prophet chose the name Gog, the Scythian, on account of its being the name of the most remote peoples; and adds that the Scythians had appeared in Palestine not so very long prior to the time of Ezekiel’s prophecy—two explanations which invalidate each other. On the question as to whether the Scythians had been in Palestine previous to the prophecy, comp. Winer, Title Scythians. We behold in the name the symbolic term for the rudest and most savage heathenism as contrasted with the perfected Theocracy. Jehovah will curb, subdue and destroy Gog like a wild beast. [3.] In harmony with the same eschatological idea, the Apocalypse took up the symbolical announcement, and to its representation of Gog and Magog as two collateral powers the inducement was given by Ezekiel, in his designation of Magog as a complex of different peoples. In the general judgment picture (Revelation 16) these enemies appear as the kings of the east, who come from the region of barbarism beyond the Euphrates. [4.] “In Jewish Theology, also, the two names, of which the first denotes in Ezekiel l. c., the king of the land and people of Magog, are found in conjunction as the names of nations: In fine extremitatis dierum Gog et Magog et exercitus eorum adscendent Hierosolyma et per manus regis Messiæ ipsi cadent, et VII. annos dierum ardebunt filii Israelis ex armis eorum (Targ. Hieros. in Num. xi. 27, etc.).” Duesterdieck. Comp. De Wette, p. 191. Ibid., singular interpretations of the names by Augustine, Jerome et al.; application to the Goths, Saracens, Turks, all enemies of the Church, Antichrist. “The sorriest interpretation is that of Bar Cochab (Wetst.).” Hengstenb. (2. p. 369 [Eng. Tr.]) seems to find a significancy in Brentano’s initial juxtaposition of Gog, Magog and Demagog. A witty reply to the perhaps only seeming desire to discover Gog and Magog in the demagogues of the 19th century, see in Ebrard, Note, p. 517. To the war.—That last great war, foretold for ages by Prophecy. The number of whom is as the sand of the sea.—According to Ezekiel even, Gog leads with him a mixture of eastern nations (as did, in reality, Attila, Genghis Khan and Timur). At the same time, the figure employed is expressive, on the one hand, of the multitude of sordid human natures, and on the other hand, of a blind trust in this multitude. The salvability of the Scythians, however, is expressly declared by the Apostle Paul, Col_3:11.
In the coalition of Satan with the mob of Gog and Magog, the combination of demon and beast, serpent and swine, formed by the dragon figure, is completely realized.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–10 that old--ancient serpent (Rev 12:9).
that old--ancient serpent (Rev 12:9).
thousand years--As seven mystically implies universality, so a thousand implies perfection, whether in good or evil [AQUINAS on ch. 11]. Thousand symbolizes that the world is perfectly leavened and pervaded by the divine; since thousand is ten, the number of the world, raised to the third power, three being the number of God [AUBERLEN]. It may denote literally also a thousand years.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–10 Capture of the real antichrist—Satan, and his thousand year…
Capture of the real antichrist—Satan, and his thousand year imprisonment, Rev_20:1-3.
1. And—See last note. Of course, no intelligent reader imagines that an angel with real metallic chain lays corporeal hand upon Satan’s body. The angel is the going forth of divine power energizing the moral and spiritual forces repressive of sin and Satan.
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Chain—The decisive check upon infernal agencies over man.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–10 The Binding of Satan. The First Resurrection. Chap. 20…
The Binding of Satan. The First Resurrection. Chap. 20 Rev_20:1-6
1. the bottomless pit] See on Rev_9:1.
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in his hand] Lit. on his hand—hung over it.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–10 (1) And I saw an angel come down .…
THE BINDING OF SATAN.
(1) And I saw an angel come down . . .—Rather, And I saw an angel descending out of the heaven, having the key of the abyss, and a great chain on (not merely in his hand, but hanging from it as it would do when on) his hand. It is needless to settle who is represented by this angel. It is enough that in the vision he manifests by the key and the chain which he carries that there is power in Him, who has the keys of death and of Hades (Rev_1:18), to bind, as He has death-wounded, him that had the power of death. The bottomless pit is the abyss, as we have had elsewhere (Rev_9:1; Rev_11:7; and Rev_17:8. Comp. Luk_8:31); it is figuratively the abode of the devil and his associate angels (Mat_25:41).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–10 And I saw an angel come down from heaven;…
And I saw an angel come down from heaven; coming down out of heaven. The usual mode of introducing a new vision. (cf. Rev_4:1, etc.) On account of Rev_1:18, some have considered this angel to be Christ himself; but this is incorrect. As in Rev_12:7-9, an angel is the immediate agent in this expulsion of Satan (vide infra).
Having the key of the bottomless pit; the abyss; as in Rev_9:1, Rev_9:2, 11 11:7 17:8. In all these places the word signifies the present abode of Satan and his angels, whence they direct their operations in hostility to God, not the place of their final punishment (see ver. 10). In Luk_8:31 the word has exactly the same meaning; while in the only remaining place where it is used in the New Testament, viz. Rom_10:7, it stands for the place of abode of the souls of the dead. Having the key of the abyss therefore informs us that power is given to this angel over Satan during the time of this world"s existence. And a great chain in his hand; literally, upon his hand, as if lying on it and hanging from it; the chain evidently symbolizing the power of the angel over the inhabitants of the abyss, and the purpose with which he now comes, viz. to restrain the power of Satan.
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Vers. 1-3. Satan bound for a thousand years.
God sees the end from the beginning. If he pleases, he can disclose the future to others, although even then, by reason of the limitation of creature faculties, the unfolding of the future must be limited too. There is, moreover, one feature of that limit which cannot be too clearly recognized, viz. that inasmuch as man has no strictly creative power, and can only weave new patterns by putting together in different forms the materials ready to his hand, so also he can conceive of the new life of the ages to come only by means of some varied setting of the scenes of the ages that are past. Hence our God graciously stoops to our capacity, and puts his revealings of the forthcoming years under the form of the facts which have marked those that are past. Thus the events which are to mark the consummation of this age are set forth in two forms, viz.
(1) by a representation of the good we already enjoy as wrought up to a higher degree of perfection; and
(2) by setting forth the evil over which we mourn as brought to extinction, or as restricted within narrower bounds. Now, under this last-mentioned form, a prolonged period is here set forth, spoken of as a thousand years, as one during which the evil one shall be bound and pent up within his own place. Many questions naturally start up as we study this passage a passage which is not specially easy, under any circumstances, but which we cannot help thinking has been made to appear vastly more difficult than it is in itself, by reason of the enormous incubus of fanciful theories by which it has been all but smothered. We venture to think that even although, owing to lack of data, there are some queries the full answer to which must yet be left in abeyance, yet there is quite enough in the verses before us that is sufficiently clear to make the heart leap with delight, to stimulate our hopes, and to excite our prayers. Who is the angel? What is the period of a thousand years? What is the binding? When does it begin? These are the queries which seem to need a reply before we can appreciate and appropriate the disclosures which the paragraph contains.
1. Who is the angel? Some say the Lord Jesus Christ, because he alone controls Satan"s power. It is quite true that Jesus alone controls the evil one, but it is also true that he does so at times by the instrumentality of others. So far as the symbolism of the text goes, there is no reason for thinking the angel to be other than a created one. Still, if any see reason for thinking otherwise, even then the main sense of the passage is the same. Our Lord Jesus may bind the evil one directly or mediately.
2. What is the period specified? There are four hypotheses respecting the thousand years. One that it is to be taken literally; a second, that on the "day for a year" principle it is equivalent to 365, 000 years; a third, that it is an indication of completeness, but not of time; a fourth, that it is a definite expression for a period indefinitely prolonged. The first of these is the one most commonly adopted; although why, if twelve hundred and sixty days mean twelve hundred and sixty years, the "thousand years" should be less than that by two hundred and sixty days is to the writer extremely puzzling. The second and third views have few defenders. It seems to us to be much safer to look at the expression as indicating an indefinite period of time, of immense duration a time of peace and freedom from ill, which will vastly exceed the period of trial and sorrow during which the Church"s wilderness life will have lasted.
3. What is the binding? At present it may suffice to say that it certainly denotes such a restriction upon Satan, his doings and rovings, that during this period he will not be able to "go about seeking whom he may devour "to the extent he would desire.
4. When does the binding begin? According to some, it is past.
(1) According to Hengstenberg, the thousand years began (on the Christmas Eve of the year 800, when the pope placed the crown on the head of Charlemagne. But surely there was not at that time, nor during the thousand years after, such a state of things as would seem to be represented by a binding of Satan for the whole time. Hengstenberg takes the thousand years literally, and thinks that even now Satan is loosed from his prison, and that depravity has reached its utmost height.
(2) According to many, and among them the most thoughtful and devout expositors, the binding of Satan began when Jesus came. Our Lord"s casting out devils proved that a check was put on Satan"s power; this restraint was increased when Jesus died, and is continued in the perpetual advance of the kingdom of Christ. They refer to such passages as Mat_12:29 Heb_2:14, 15 1Jn_3:8 Col_2:15 Luk_10:18. But
(a) the symbolism of the text seems to indicate a more effectual restraint on evil than the earth as yet has known; and
(b) since the binding of Satan is placed so nearly to the consummation of all things, since the kingdom of Christ had actually been in progress for some thirty years when the book was written, and since the prophecies were declared to be of "things which should be hereafter," it seems much more consonant with the date, the aim, and the plan of the book to think of the binding of Satan as that which was yet to come in the revolutions of the ages. At the same time, it is quite possible to combine this second view with another,
(3) according to which, even if the binding of Satan did commence with the establishment of the kingdom of Christ, the results of that binding would take ages to work out, and would, in the long run, bring about more of calm and of rest than earth has yet been permitted to see. Even the expositors who adopt the second view do in many cases combine it with the third, and regard the binding here specified as something so much more effective than any hitherto known, as to be virtually new. It is to this conclusion that we find ourselves shut up: that this period which is spoken of as a thousand years is one of a blessed calm yet to be realized, surpassing all that earth has known; that though the causes are already at work to bring it about, and though the train of events is laid which is to usher it in, yet that the passage refers to the blessed issue in days to come, when evil shall be kept under more effective restraint than before. This period is what is generally thought of as "the millennium." From the passage before us it is perfectly clear that the millennium is not a period of the extinction of evil, but only of its restraint. Neither sin nor death nor the curse will cease till the new heavens and the new earth are brought in, and they are not yet. While, however, the righteous on earth will enjoy a period of delightful calm, the faithful ones who shall have gone hence will be living and reigning with Christ all that while. They will be enjoying "the first resurrection" (see next homily). Let as now, after these few preliminary explanations, look at our present theme, "the binding of Satan," in the light of the entire Scripture teaching, that we may learn what is to be the state of the world during this period of halcyon calm, and how it is to be brought about by forces and agencies already in operation. We shall approach our subject cautiously and gradually. May we in God"s light see light!
I THERE IS IN THE WORLD A MIGHTY FORCE OF EVIL. AS set forth in these Apocalyptic visions, we have seen:
1. That old serpent, called the devil.
2. The first beast, or worldly power opposed to God, having its power from the dragon.
3. The second beast, or false prophet, having his power from the first.
4. The harlot, Babylon the great, or apostasy, whether in the ecclesiastical or commercial sphere. We have seen No. 4 destroyed; Nos. 3 and 2 cast into the lake of fire; still No. 1 remains. We are to watch what becomes of him. His power in the world is too well known.
II MIGHTIER FORCES OF GOOD, ALTHOUGH UNSEEN, ARE IN THE BACKGROUND. As we read this book, we can but note that evil is surveyed from above; held in check by God; allowed to work for a time known to the year, the month, the day, and the hour. And as we have seen the downfall of three of the forms of evil, we here watch with deepest interest a new check upon the first.
III THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE MIGHTIER AGAINST THE MIGHTY HAS BEEN MATTER OF ANCIENT PROMISE. No sooner had the tempter marred Eden"s bowers than the promise was given. (Gen_3:15) The serpent might bruise the seed of the woman, but he would do so at a fatal cost to himself. Dim promise! needing the evolution of ages to interpret it, but yet containing that which is the basis of our hope when in agony over the tempter"s power.
IV THE STRONGER FORCE OF GOOD HAS EVER BEEN AT WORK. This world has never been given up to the evil one. He has never roamed unchecked. He has gone about only so far as the Lord of souls has permitted. When Jesus hung on the cross, his power was grappled with; when he died, "the prince of this world" was "cast out." Through death our Lord means to destroy him that has the power of death, even the devil, and to deliver them who through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage. "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." And when the Prince of life resigned his breath, crying, "It is finished!" then did the empire of darkness receive a fatal blow, and the death knell of sin was sounded in the hearing of heaven, earth, and hell. (cf. Gen_3:15 Joh_12:31 Heb_2:14, 15 Col_2:15 Mat_12:29 Act_26:18)
V WHEREVER THE GOSPEL HAS BEEN PREACHED THERE A BINDING OF SATAN HAS BEEN AND IS BEING EFFECTED. Probably no one supposes that the phrase "binding" is to be taken literally. One way in which an effect would be wrought which would most naturally and impressively be described as a binding of Satan, would be that of transferring his subjects to another power, and so despoiling his kingdom. When Satan is rendered powerless to retain his prey, and more powerless still when he has lost them, surely he is bound. Now, we know not only that in and on the cross our Lord spoiled principalities and powers, and made a show of them openly, but also that Paul and others were sent forth to turn men from the power of Satan unto God, and that the great apostle praised God that the Colossians were snatched from the power of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of the Son of God. Even so. Satan is no match for the Saviour"s cross and the Spirit"s sword. He has ever moved in chains, but never were his chains so heavy or so fast as since Jesus died.
VI NEVERTHELESS, THE PASSAGE BEFORE US LEADS US TO EXPECT A MUCH GREATER RESTRAINT ON SATAN"S ACTIVITY THAN HAS AS YET BEEN KNOWN. Peter refers to him as "going about," etc. Paul said, "The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." So that we are already prepared to expect a time when Satan"s power on the earth shall be curtailed more and more. The verb here used (ekrathse) gives the impression of some very strong, decided, and perhaps sudden arrest. What will be the means by which this will be carried out we are not here told. In the absence of aught to the contrary, we have a right to expect that the "Word of truth and the power of God" will suffice to bring about the whole, when the Spirit of God "convicts the world of sin". (Joh_16:8) No one can show that these "weapons of the holy war" are inadequate, nor that the power of the Holy Ghost is to be supplanted by aught more effective for the subjugation of evil. Let but the Divine power which has subdued our hearts be universally diffused, and it is enough. For surely Satan will be effectually bound when hearts refuse to give him room.
VII WHEN THE BINDING OF SATAN IS COMPLETELY EFFECTED, THERE MUST NEEDS BE A PERIOD OF REST, SUCH AS NEITHER THE WORLD NOR THE CHURCH HAS ENJOYED SINCE "SIN ENTERED INTO THE WORLD, AND DEATH BY SIN." We are more and more drawn towards the conviction that our Lord himself commenced this binding of the evil when he began his public ministry; and that as the power of the gospel advances, the binding becomes more and more stringent. The duration of time intended by a thousand years we cannot define. Some, as Professor Milligan, regard it as giving no temporal indication at all, but as expressive of completeness. But if the binding of Satan has been going on ever since our Lord was on earth, the thousand years begun then are going on now, and are moving forward to their completion. Well may we pray, "O Lord, hasten that day when Satan shall be so completely bound that he will be unable to retain a single captive in his hold!" How will an emancipated world rejoice! The rebuke of God"s people will be taken away from off all the earth. The reign of peace and righteousness shall set in, and the time be come when on the bells of the horses shall be graven, "Holiness to the Lord." Why it should be that after this effectual binding there should be allowed another onrush of evil, we cannot tell; but the holy seer bids us look to the end even of that, and to luxuriate in the blessed vision of complete and endless rest.
Note:
1. Let our faith embrace all that is in the Word, and we shall then find nothing in the fiercest conflicts of the age to shock or disturb it.
2. Let us thank God for the restraint which we know is even now put upon Satan. He worries, but he cannot devour. Christ prays for us, that Satan may not sift us as wheat.
3. Let us be stimulated by the fact that, through the energy of the Spirit of God, the power of evil is being subdued within us and around us.
4. Let us, with renewed faith, energy, prayer, and hope, be found doing our part towards bringing about earth"s time of rest. Let no disbelief, either in the efficacy of the gospel or in the power of the Spirit, be allowed to paralyze our movements by lessening our hope. The grace which has conquered millions on millions of hearts is adequate still to go forth conquering and to conquer.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN Vers. 1-10. The restraint upon evil.
Following most appropriately upon the foregoing description of a conflict, and the conquest by the truth and the power of righteousness, is a representation, in most significant imagery, of the restraint that is put upon evil by the prevalence of righteousness the chaining back the clouds of night by the rising sun. The spirit of evil, "the dragon, the old serpent," "the devil and Satan," is "laid hold" by "an angel coming down out of heaven," and bound with "a great chain," and cast "into the abyss," which is shut and sealed. This is to be for "a thousand years;" after that "he must be loosed for a little season." With as great distinctness as could well be employed herein is set forth
I THE EFFECTUAL RESTRAINT OF THE POWER OF EVIL. It is here pictured as a single act. But we must read the history of the strife which is ever proceeding the gradual leavening of the entire life of humanity by the principles and the power of the holy gospel. Whatever may be the oscillations between the probabilities of success and the danger of defeat, this picture must be held to declare the ultimate happy triumph of the true and good over the false and the evil. Satan is held in chains; his power is restricted. The heavenly holds back the earthly and the hellish. It is the comfortable encouragement to the patient, suffering toiler that the agency employed of God is effective. That binding and restraining every faithful servant must see to be now going on.
II THE DURATION OF THIS RESTRAINT. The millennium thousand years a long but definite period, now reigns; yet must we not forget the symbolical character even of the definite words of this book. No time must be affixed. It is a period of blessing, of rest, of rejoicing. The toils of the Church, and the patience of the suffering faithful ones, have, by Divine grace, become fruitful. Now in the world, permeated by the pure and lofty principles of Christianity, peace, truth, righteousness, reign; and by how much they prevail, by so much evil is restrained. In their supremacy is to be seen the complete chaining of the evil agents of an evil kingdom.
III THIS PERIOD IS MARKED AS ONE OF TRIUMPH AND REJOICING on behalf of the faithful Church of Christ. Thrones are set, the faithful reign with Christ, and judgment over human conduct is given to them a significant indication that principles of righteousness are predominant, and that by them human life is adjudged. These are "blessed and holy;" they have priestly functions, they approach, they mediate, they are channels of blessing, they live to reign; they escape that second death which is the penalty of sin, from which they have been raised they partake in a first resurrection which presages another.
IV To this happy period of the universal prevalence of Christian truth there succeeds A TEMPORARY RELAPSE. Like all human blessedness, even this has the signature of imperfectness upon it. It is historical, not imposed. But this is only temporary, "for a little time," and issues in a final destruction of all tempting and evil power even "forever and ever.
In this the Church is to find
(1) encouragement to faith;
(2) motive for diligent labour;
(3) the most cheering assurances in times of discouragement and fear.
The truth shall ultimately prevail; the false, the foul, the vile, shall be restrained. R.G.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS Vers. 1, 2. The first scene in the moral history of redeemed humanity: the scene of moral struggle.
"And I saw an angel come down from heaven," etc. No inspired book presents a greater scope for visionary and idle speculation than this Apocalypse. Here every imagination has the widest sweep for its wildest evolutions. Hence we have almost as many interpretations of its contents as we have expositors. One can scarcely pursue a more easy or certain path to popularity than by propounding some ingenious exegesis of this book. I intend going through the whole of this chapter and the first four verses of the succeeding one, in five analyses of homilies; because I think I discover there what seems admirably adapted for deep and practical moral impression. The nineteen verses may be fairly taken as an illustration of the moral history of humanity. They disclose no less than five moral scenes through which the redeemed portion of our race is to pass; namely:
(1) The scene of moral struggle;
(2) the scene of moral triumph;
(3) the scene of moral reaction;
(4) the scene of an awful retribution; and
(5) the scene of the final destiny of the good.
The first the scene of moral struggle is the one unfolded in these verses. This scene shows us two things.
I THAT REDEEMED HUMANITY HAS A TEARFUL ANTAGONIST TO CONTEND WITH. This enemy is called "dragon," "serpent," "devil," "Satan." This highly symbolic language, applied to the great antagonist of the good, implies three things.
1. The actual existence of such an enemy. The names "dragon," "serpent," etc., must stand for something. They are the names of real beings, and cannot be supposed as used to designate the mere phantoms of the imagination. Most conclusive arguments for the existence of some mighty agent of evil, whose influence is world wide, may be drawn from three considerations.
(1) The universal belief of humanity.
(2) The opposite classes of moral phenomena. In the world we have error, selfishness, infidelity, and misery; and truth, benevolence, religion, and happiness. Can these be branches from the same root? or streams from the same fount?
(3) The general teaching of the Bible.
2. The personality of such an enemy. These are names of creatures having individual existence and attributes. The Bible always speaks of this evil existent as a person. It is far too great a demand upon our credulity to believe that the various inspired writers, from Moses to John, extending over a period of more than two thousand years, possessing various idiosyncrasies and attainments, and living under different economies, governments, and circumstances, could all fall into the common habit of speaking of evil as a person if it were only a principle. This, I say, is too much for our faith. Moreover, an evil principle implies an evil person. Sin is not some mysterious entity, separate from moral existence. Is sin an act? Then it must have an agent, Is it a motive? Motive implies thought, and thought implies a thinker.
3. The characteristics of such an enemy. "Dragon" stands as the emblem of power. Probably the leviathan described in Job 41. is of the same class: "Shall not one be cast down, even at the sight of him?" "Serpent" stands as the emblem of cunning and venom. "Devil" means accuser. "Satan" signifies opposer. This adversary of redeemed humanity, then, is mighty, crafty, and virulent. The New Testament is full of the doctrine that this being is the determined foe of humanity. (Mat_4:10 Mat_12:26 Mar_4:15 Luk_10:18 Luk_22:3, 31 Act_26:18 Rom_16:20 2Co_11:14 Rev_2:13 Rev_12:9)
II THAT HEAVEN HAS VOUCHSAFED AN AGENCY WHICH IS DESTINED TO MASTER THE ADVERSARY. "And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit abyss." Who is this angel that descends from heaven? The word "angel" both in Hebrew and Greek, means messenger. It is applied to impersonal as well as personal agents; and it is applied to evil, as well as good, personal agents. It is evidently used here to designate some good personal agent, for he descends from heaven, and descends from heaven to do battle with evil. The language applies preeminently to Christ, but refers also to every true religious teacher. Let the word "angel," here, then, stand for every true religious teacher including Christ and all his true servants; and we shall get a most clear and practical meaning from the passage. We have here two things about this true teacher this angel.
1. His authority. He has the "key" of the bottomless pit. A key is the emblem of authority. Christ is said to have the keys of death and hell (Hades) at his girdle; and to his servant Peter he gave the "keys" of the kingdom the authority to open the kingdom of truth, by true preaching, to Jew and Gentile. Every man who has the true spirit and power of a teacher, has the "key" or the authority to teach. He has a right to do battle with the enemy wherever he is found; whether in literature or commerce, Churches or governments, theories or practices. A true man has Heaven"s key in his hand for this work.
2. His instrumentality. What is the instrument employed? "A chain." What is the chain? Iron, brass, adamant? No, no! These cannot fetter intellect these cannot manacle soul. Nothing can curb or restrain the influence of Satan but Christian truth. What is meant by binding Satan? It does not mean the binding of his being or faculties, but the binding of his influence. He is to be bound, in the sense of limiting his sway, by closing up human hearts against him. As liberty binds the influence of slavery, intelligence the influence of ignorance, and religion the influence of infidelity, so Christian truth is to bind the influence of Satan. Every truth is a link in that mighty chain. The chain of Christian teaching is far too weak and short at present to restrain the force or measure the dimensions of Satanic influence.
This is the scene through which we are passing. All is battle now. For the subjugation of the common foe, let each forge some holy thought link for the all-enfettering chain. D.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 7 An angel … having the key of the bottomless…
Rev_20:1-3
An angel … having the key of the bottomless pit.
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Satan
1. Whereas it is said that this Angel that came down from heaven had the key of the bottomless pit, we see that our Saviour has all power given to Him in heaven, the earth, and hell itself.
2. That He had a great chain in His hand, shows us that how mighty and malicious soever Satan may be, yet for our comfort Christ has him in a chain, without whose permission he can do nothing.
3. Whereas Satan is called an old serpent, we see to whom they are like who are habituated in wickedness and crafty to do evil.
4. Whereas he is called the devil, or an accuser, we see whose brood they are who in like manner are false accusers of their brethren, slanderers, etc.
5. He is also called Satan, that is, an enemy to Gods glory and mans good of salvation, therefore whoever by doctrine or practice impairs the one, or opposes the means of the other, they are satanical, and like him.
6. Whereas it is said that Satan was shut up, that he should deceive the nations no more, we see that his task from the beginning hath been deceiving, using fraud where he cannot prevail by force; wherefore we should beware of his deceiving in his subtle instruments, and acknowledge whose brood they are.
7. Whereas it is said that he was bound up so long that he should deceive no more, this shows that on the contrary, therefore, when we see seducers arise and abound, that then Satan in his instruments for the punishment of a nation or Church is set loose to be a lying spirit in the mouth of false prophets.
8. Whereas it is said that after the time of his binding or shutting up he is to be loosed a little season, this is greatly for the comfort of the godly, that Satans prevailing in his instruments is determined by God, and shall be but for a little season; therefore with patience let them possess their souls. (Wm. Guild, D. D.)
He laid hold on the dragon.--
The great enemy of humanity
I. The great enemy of humanity described. Dragon stands as an emblem of power. His power is seen in the vast authority which he wields.
1. Over fallen angels (Eph_6:11-12). He is the leader of those myriads.
2. The authority he exercises over men. He leadeth the world captive at his will. He worketh in the children of disobedience. He opposes God, Christ, the universe. The existence of such a being in the universe as this impresses us with--
(1) The fallibility of the holiest creature.
(2) The independent force of moral mind.
(3) The mysteriousness of the Divine government.
II. The great enemy of humanity imprisoned.
1. His imprisonment is effected by a Divine messenger.
2. His imprisonment is effected by Divine authority.
3. His imprisonment is effected by a Divine instrument.
What is the chain? Gospel truth. What is meant by imprisoning Satan? Limiting the sphere of his agency. Every man who expels him from his own heart helps to imprison him, and every man who seeks to expel him from the heart of others helps to imprison him. As liberty binds the influence of slavery, intelligence the influence of ignorance, religion the influence of infidelity, so Divine truth will bind the influence of the devil. Lesson:
1. The true sphere of heroic action. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Resist him as he is on the arena of your own soul; resist him as you find him on the arena of society in everyday life.
2. The grandeur of the Christian character. Put on the whole armour of God, etc. (Homilist.)
The scene of mural struggle
I. Redeemed humanity has a fearful antagonist to contend with.
1. The actual existence of such an enemy.
(1) Universal belief of humanity.
(2) The opposite classes of moral phenomena. In the world we have error, selfishness, infidelity, misery, and truth, benevolence, religion, happiness. Can these be branches from the same root?
(3) The general teaching of the Bible.
2. The personality of such an enemy. An evil principle implies an evil person.
3. The characteristics of such an enemy.
(1) Mighty.
(2) Crafty.
(3) Virulent.
II. Heaven has vouchsafed an agency which is destined to master the adversary. Let the word angel here stand for every true religious teacher.
1. His authority. Every man who has the spirit and power of a teacher has the key or the authority to teach. He has a right to do battle with the enemy wherever he is found; whether in literature or commerce, churches or governments, theories or practices.
2. His instrumentality. A chain. Iron, brass, adamant? No. These cannot fetter intellect or manacle soul. Nothing can curb or restrain the influence of Satan but Christian truth. What is meant by binding Satan? It does not mean the binding of his being or faculties, but the binding of his influence. He is to be bound, in the sense of limiting his sway, by closing up human hearts against him. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Bound him a thousand years.--
Satan bound for a thousand years
I. There is in the world a mighty force of evil.
II. Mightier forces of good, although unseen, are in the background.
III. The employment of the mightier against the mighty has been matter of ancient promise (Gen_3:5).
IV. The stronger force of good has ever been at work. This world has never been given up to the evil one.
V. Wherever the gospel has been preached there a binding of Satan has been and is being effected.
VI. Nevertheless, the passage before us leads us to expect a much greater restraint on Satans activity than has as yet been known.
VII. When the binding of Satan is completely effected, there must needs be a period of rest, such as neither the world nor the Church has enjoyed since sin entered into the world, and death by sin. Note--
1. Let our faith embrace all that is in the Word, and we shall then find nothing in the fiercest conflicts of the age to shock or disturb it.
2. Let us thank God for the restraint which we know is even now put upon Satan. He worries, but he cannot devour.
3. Let us be stimulated by the fact that, through the energy of the Spirit of God, the power of evil is being subdued within us and around us.
4. Let us, with renewed faith, energy, prayer, and hope, be found doing our part towards bringing about earths time of rest. (C. Clemance, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1
CHAPTER X V I.
JUDGMENT OF SATAN AND OF THE WICKED.
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Rev_20:1-15.
IN now approaching chap. 20, with its yet unsolved difficulties of interpretation, it is of essential importance to observe, in the first place, the relation of the chapter to what immediately precedes. The Seer is not entering upon an entirely new subject. He distinctly continues, on the contrary, the prosecution of a theme he had before begun. In the previous portion of his book three great enemies of the saints of God had been introduced to us, the dragon or the devil, the beast, and the false prophet. These were the main opponents of the Lamb, in one way or another stirring up all the efforts that had been made against Him by the kings of the earth, their armies, and their followers. For a time they had appeared to succeed. They had persecuted the saints, had compelled them to flee, had overcome them, and killed them. This, however, could not continue; and it was to be shown that the final triumph remains with those who have suffered for the sake of righteousness. In chap. 19, we have the beginning, but not the close, of this triumph. Of the three great enemies only two - the beast and the false prophet - perish in that chapter. The destruction of the third is reserved for chap. 20, and is effected at the tenth verse of the chapter. The verses following then describe the judgment of those who had listened to these enemies, but who, though defeated, or even killed,1 or devoured by fire out of heaven when in their service,2 had not yet been consigned to their doom. Thereafter nothing remains, in order to complete the triumph of Christ and His saints, but that death and Hades shall also be removed from the scene and cast into the lake of fire. (1 Rev_19:21; 2 Rev_20:9)
These considerations are of themselves sufficient to show that the overthrow of Satan, and not the reign of a thousand years, is the main theme of the first ten verses of the chapter. So far is the latter from being the culminating point of the whole book, that it is not even introduced at the beginning of any new and important section. It starts no new series of visions. It comes in, in the midst of a section devoted to an entirely different matter: -
"And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil, and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years should be finished: after this he must be loosed for a little time. And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and such as worshipped not the beast, neither his image, and received not the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest of the dead Lived not until the thousand years should be finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: over these the second death hath no authority, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. And when the thousand years are finished, Satan than be loosed out of his prison, and shall come forth to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up over the breadth of the earth, and com passed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fare and brimstone, where arc also the beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever (Rev_20:1-10)."
It is impossible within the limits of a commentary such as the present to discuss the different interpretations that have been given to a passage so difficult and so much controverted as the above. Nothing more can be attempted than to state briefly what seems to be the true meaning of the sacred writer, together with the grounds upon which the interpretation to be suggested rests.
The fundamental principle of that interpretation, to be kept clearly and resolutely in view, is this: that the thousand years mentioned in the passage express no period of time. They are not a figure for the whole Christian era, now extending to nearly nineteen hundred years. Nor do they denote a certain space of time, longer or shorter, it may be, than the definite number of years spoken of, at the close of the present dispensation, and to be in the view of some preceded, in the view of others followed, by the second Advent of our Lord, They embody an idea; and that idea, whether applied to the subjugation of Satan or to the triumph of the saints, is the idea of completeness or perfection. Satan is bound for a thousand years; that is, he is completely bound. The saints reign for a thousand years; that is, they are introduced into a state of perfect and glorious victory. Before endeavoring to bring out this thought more fully, several preliminary considerations may be noticed.
1. Years may be understood in this sense. In Eze_39:9 it is said that the inhabitants of the cities of Israel shall .prevail against the enemies described, and "shall go forth, and shall make fires of the weapons and burn them, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the hand-staves, and the spears, and they shall make fires of them seven years." No one can suppose that the "seven years" here spoken of are to be literally understood, or even that the length of time which would be needed to burn the weapons is the thought upon which the prophet dwells. His meaning, in correspondence with the use of the number seven, can only be that these weapons shall be destroyed with a great and complete destruction. Again, in the same chapter, at: Eze_39:12, after the defeat of "Gog and all his multitude," it is said, "And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land." A literal interpretation is here not less impossible than in the case of the burning of the weapons; nor can the meaning be exhausted by the thought that a long time would be necessary for the burying. The number "seven" must have its due force assigned to it, and the prophet can only mean that the land should be thoroughly cleansed from heathen impurity. The use of the term "years" in the vision before us seems to be exactly similar; and the probability that it is so rises almost to certainty when we observe that, as proved by the vision of Gog and Magog in the subsequent part of the chapter, the prophecy of Ezekiel is before the Seers eye, and that it constitutes the foundation upon which his whole delineation rests.
The only difficulty connected with this view is that in the third verse of the chapter Satan is said to have been shut into the abyss until the thousand years should be finished, and that in the seventh verse we read, And when the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed. But the difficulty is more specious than real. Let us familiarize ourselves with the thought that the thousand years may simply express completeness, thoroughness, either of defeat or victory; let us remember that the Seer had represented the defeat of Satan by the figure of being bound for a thousand years; finally, let us notice, as we have yet to see more fully, that Satan, although deprived of power over the righteous, is still to be the deceiver and ruler of the wicked: and it immediately follows that this latter thought could find no more appropriate form than in the statement that the deception took place, not "until," or "after," the thousand years should be finished. This is simply the carrying out of the symbolism already employed. To revert for a moment to the symbolism of Ezekiel, let us suppose that, after the prophet had described the burning of the weapons for "seven years," he had wished to mention also some other step by which the burning was to be followed. What more suitable words could he have used than that it took place either "after this," or "after the seven years were finished"? In point of fact, this is exactly what the prophet does. He has occasion to refer to further efforts made to secure the purity of the land; and the words employed by him are, "After the end of seven months shall they search."* The one expression is no more than the natural con sequence of the other. (* Eze_39:14)
2. What is the meaning of the last words of the third verse of the chapter, - He (i.e., Satan) must be loosed for a little time? What is this "little time"? The words take us directly to that conception of the Christian age which is so intimately interwoven with the structure of the Apocalypse, and even of the whole New Testament, - that it is all "a little time." This is particularly apparent in the application of the very same words to the souls under the altar in Rev_6:11 : "And it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little time, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, which should be killed even as they were, should be fulfilled." The "little time" there is undeniably that extending from the moment of the vision to the close of the present dispensation. But, if it be so there, we are entitled to suppose that the very same expression, when used in the passage before us, will be used in the same sense; and that, when it is said Satan shall be loosed "for a little time," the meaning is that he shall be loosed for the whole Christian age. Again, in Rev_12:12 we read, "The devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time." The "short time" here referred to begins with the casting down of the devil out of heaven into the earth spoken of in the ninth verse of the same chapter. It must therefore include the whole period of his action in this world; and the manner in which that period is designated corresponds closely with the description of the time during which he is said, in chap. 20, to be loosed. Again, in Rev_10:6 the angel swears that there shall be "time" no longer, using the same word for time that we meet with in the verse now under consideration; so that it would appear as if to the author of the Apocalypse the word "time" were a kind of technical term by which he was accustomed to denote the period of the Church s probation in this world. Lastly, this conclusion is powerfully confirmed by the many passages of the Apocalypse in which it is clear that the Christian dispensation, from its beginning to its end, is looked upon as a "very little while," as hastening to its final issue, and as about to be closed by One who cometh quickly.* The "little time," therefore, of the present chapter during which Satan is loosed, and which, when more fully dwelt upon, is the time of the war spoken of in Rev_20:7-9, is the historical period of the Christian dispensation, during which Satan is permitted to deceive the nations and to lead them against the camp of the saints and the beloved city. It is, in short, the time between the first and second coming of our Lord. The period so often sought in the thousand years of Rev_20:2 is really to be found in the "little time" of Rev_20:3. (* Rev_1:3; Rev_2:16; Rev_3:20; Rev_22:20, etc., 1Co_7:29; Heb_10:37)
3. Attention ought to be particularly directed to the condition of the saints during the thousand years spoken of. It is described in general terms as a first resurrection. Certain words of our Lord in the Gospel of St. John throw important light upon the meaning of this expression: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that have heard shall live,"1 and, again, a little later in the same discourse, "Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth."2 Let us compare these two verses with one another, and the presence of the clause "and now is" in the first, taken along with its omission in the second, leaves no doubt as to the principle on which they are to be interpreted. The first refers to a spiritual, the second to a bodily, resurrection. Here then in the words of our Lord Himself we have the source whence the idea of the "first resurrection" of the Apocalypse is derived. It is not an actual resurrection from the grave, although that resurrection is potentially involved in it. It is a spiritual resurrection in an hour "that now is;" and the fact that this is St Johns meaning is brought out still more clearly by the intimation that what he saw was souls, whose resurrection bodies had not yet been given them.3 (1 Joh_5:25; 2 Joh_5:28; 3Comp. Rev_6:9)
The condition of the saints thought of in this vision is described, however, not only generally, but in various particulars, all of which, it will be seen, correspond with the apocalyptic idea of it even in a present world. And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them. But we have been already told that "they reign over the earth."1 Judgment was given unto them, words which seem best understood in the sense, so peculiar to St. John, that for believers there is in the ordinary sense of the term no judgment. As they have passed through death, so also they have passed through judgment.2 They lived with Christ. But Christ Himself had said in the Gospel, "Because I live, and ye shall live."3 They reigned with Christ. But that is only another method of saying that they sat on thrones, with the added conception, so often associated with the word in the Apocalypse, that their enemies were bruised beneath their feet. Over these the second death hath no authority. But we have before been told of "him that over-cometh" that he shall not be hurt of the second death."4 Finally, they shall be priests of God and of Christ. But it is needless to dwell upon the fact that from the opening of this book such has always been spoken of as the position of believers. (1 Rev_5:10; 2Comp. the teaching of our Lord in Joh_11:25-26; Joh_5:24; 3 Joh_14:19 {margin of R.V.}; 4 Rev_2:11)
Nothing, in short, is said of the saints of God in this picture of millennial bliss that does not find a parallel in what the Seer has elsewhere written of their present life. On not a few different occasions their ideal condition in this world is set forth in as glowing terms as is their thousand years glory and joy.
One expression may indeed startle us. What the Seer beheld is said to have been the souls of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God. Is the word "beheaded" to be literally understood? Then a very small number of martyrs can be thought of. The great majority of those who have died for the faith of Jesus have been martyred in other and more dreadful ways. The word is the counterpart of "slaughtered" in the vision of the souls under the altar.* These were the saints of the Old Testament, whose death is described by a term characteristic to the Jewish mind of the mode in which offerings were presented to God. When the Seer passes to the thought of the great Gentile Church, he uses a term more appropriate to the Gentile method of terminating human life. "Beheaded" therefore expresses the same thing as "slaughtered." Both words refer to martyrdom; and both include all faithful ones in the dispensations to which they respectively belong, for in the eyes of St. John all the disciples of a martyred Lord are martyrs. (* Rev_6:9)
4. The meaning of the doom inflicted upon Satan demands our notice. And the angel laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil, and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him. It is hardly possible to read these words, at the same time remembering St. Johns love of contrast or even travesty, and not to see in them a mocking counterpart of the death and burial of Jesus, when the stone was rolled to the door of the sepulchre and sealed. If so, it is not enough to say that by the infliction of this doom the power of Satan was restrained, and his influence lessened. Much more must be implied; and the language can only mean that, in one sense or another, Satan was rendered powerless and harmless, as unable to act his part as though he had been laid in the grave.
5. The use of numbers in the Apocalypse ought to be remembered. These numbers are invariably symbolical; and, if the number a thousand is to be here interpreted literally, it seems in that respect to stand alone. Nor is it a reply to this to say that, though not in the strict sense literal, it may signify a period of indefinite length. Such an interpretation would be not less opposed than the former to the genius and spirit of this book. The numbers of the Apocalypse have always a definite meaning. They express ideas, but the ideas are distinct They may belong to a region of thought different from that with which arithmetical numbers are concerned, but within that region we cannot change their value without at the same time changing the thought. We are not to imagine that numbers, in the allegorical or spiritual use made of them by the Jews, might be tossed about at their pleasure or shuffled like a pack of cards. They were a language; and the bond between them and the ideas that they involved was quite as close as it is between the words of ordinary speech and the speakers thoughts. A thousand years cannot mean two, or ten, or twenty, or three hundred and sixty-five thousand years according as we please. If they are a measure of time, the measure must be fixed; and we ought to be able to explain the principle leading us to attach to the number one thousand a value different from that which it naturally possesses.
6. The teaching of Scripture elsewhere upon this subject has to be considered. Upon this point it is unnecessary to say much, for the difference between that teaching and any view commonly taken of the thousand years reign is acknowledged. It ought to be observed, however, that this difference is not merely negative, as if the rest of the New Testament simply failed to fill in certain details of events more largely described in the Apocalypse, but upon the whole substantially the same. The difference is also positive, and in some respects irreconcilable with what we are taught by the other sacred writers. The New Testament, unless this passage be an exception, always brings the Parousia and the general judgment into the closest possible connection. It nowhere interposes a lengthened period between the resurrection of believers and that of unbelievers. It knows only of one, and that a general, resurrection; and the passages, such as 1Co_15:23-24, and 1Th_4:16-17, usually quoted to support another conclusion, fail when correctly interpreted to do so. When our Lord comes again, He at once perfects the happiness of His saints and makes all His enemies His footstool.1 One text alone may be quoted upon this point While the "first resurrection" is assigned to a date a thousand or even thousands of years before the end, it is several times repeated in the discourse of Jesus in the sixth chapter of St. John that the resurrection of believers takes place at the "last day."2 (1 Mat_25:31-46; Rom_2:5; Rom_2:7; 1Th_4:17; 2Th_1:7-10; 2 Joh_6:39-40; Joh_6:44)
7. One other consideration may be kept in view. It would appear that about the time of the Advent of our Lord there was a widely extended opinion among the Jews, traces of which are also to be found among the Gentiles, that a golden age of a thousand years duration might be anticipated in the future as a happy close to all the sins and miseries of the world.1 Here, it is sometimes urged, is the source of the apocalyptic figure of this chapter, which thus becomes only one of the wild chiliastic expectations of the time. But, even if it be allowed that St. John drew the particular figure employed by him from a general belief of his age, it by no means follows that he accepted the literal interpretation of that belief as the reality and substance of prophetic hope. In many a passage of his book he has undeniably spiritualized hopes of Israel founded on the language of the Old Testament in its outward form. He might easily do the same with what he recognized as a belief, not less widely spread and not less deeply seated in both the Jewish and Gentile portions of the Church. To use the language of the late Archdeacon Lee, "a world-wide belief such as this naturally supplied St. John with symbols and with language wherein to clothe his revelation of the fortunes of the Church, just as he has employed for the same purpose the details of the theocracy, or the imagery of war, or the phenomena and the convulsions of nature."2 In all such cases the determination of the point at issue really rests upon our view of the general tone of the writing in which the difficulty occurs, and on our perception of what will give the unity and harmony to his words for which every intelligent writer is entitled to expect credit at his readers hands. This conclusion is in the present instance strengthened by the fact that St. John did not confine himself to the traditional belief he is said to have adopted. So far from doing so, he occupies himself chiefly with a picture of that overthrow of Satan which seems to have been no part of the belief, and the mould of which is taken from entirely different sources. (1See authorities in Lee (Speakers Commentary) on Rev_20:2, and his excursus on that chapter; 2 Speakers Commentary, u.s.)
Putting together the different considerations now adduced, we can have but little difficulty in understanding either the binding of Satan or the reign of the saints for a thousand years. The vision describes no period of blessedness to be enjoyed by the Church at the close of the present dispensation. Alike negatively and positively we have simply an ideal picture of results effected by the Redeemer for His people, when for them He lived, and suffered, and died, and rose again. Thus He bound Satan for them; He cast him into the abyss; He shut him in; He sealed the abyss over him, - so that against them he can effect nothing. He is a bruised and conquered foe. He may war against them, afflict them, persecute them, kill them, but their true life is beyond his reach. Already they live a resurrection and ascended life, for it is a life hid with Christ in God, a life in that "heaven" from which the devil has been finally and forever expelled. They rest upon, they live in, a risen and glorified Redeemer; and, whatever be the age, or country, or circumstances in which their lot is cast, they sit with their Lord in the heavenly places and share His victory. He has been always triumphant, and in His triumph His people even now have part. The glory which the Father gave the Son the Son has given them.1 They cannot sin, because they are begotten of God.2 He that was begotten of God keepeth them, and the evil one toucheth them not.3 This is the reign of a thousand years, and it is the portion of every believer who in any age of the Church shares the life of his risen and exalted Lord. (1 Joh_17:22; 2 1Jn_3:9; 3 1Jn_5:18)
Thus also we may comprehend what is meant by the loosing of Satan. There is no point in the future at which he is to be loosed. He has been already loosed. Hardly was he completely conquered for the saints before he was loosed for the world. He was loosed as a great adversary who, however he may persecute the children of God, cannot touch their inner life, and who can only "deceive the nations," - the nations that have despised and rejected Christ He has never been really absent from the earth. He has gone about continually, "knowing that he hath but a short time."* But he is unable to hurt those who are kept in the hollow of the Lords hand. No doubt he tries it. That is the meaning of the description extending from the seventh to the ninth verse of this chapter, - the meaning of the war which Satan carries on against the camp of the saints and the beloved city when the thousand years are finished. In other words, no sooner was Satan, as regards the saints, completely bound than, as regards the world, he was loosed; and from that hour, through all the past history of Christianity, he has been stirring up the world against the Church. He has been summoning the nations that are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war. They war, but they do not conquer, until at last fire comes down out of heaven and devours them. The devil that deceived them is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever. (* Rev_12:12)
The whole picture of the thousand years is in its main features - in the binding of Satan, in the security and blessedness of the righteous, and in the loosing of Satan for the war - a striking parallel to the scenes in chap. 12 of this book. There Michael and his angels contended with the devil and his angels; and the latter "prevailed not,"1 but were cast out of heaven into the earth, so that the inhabitants of heaven are forever safe from them. There the man-child who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, and from the thought of whom it is impossible to separate the thought of those who are one with Him, is caught up unto God and unto His throne. Finally, there also the dragon, though unable really to hurt the saints, "the rest of the womans seed," makes war upon them, but without result. Of this scene the picture which we have been considering is at once a repetition and a fuller development; and, when we call to mind the peculiarities marking the structure of the Apocalypse, we seem in this fact alone to have no slight evidence of the correctness of the interpretation now proposed.2 (1Comp. the remarkable parallel in Joh_1:5 : "and the darkness overcame it not.")
(2It is not to be denied that difficulties attend the interpretation of the thousand years suggested in the text. The writer would advert in a note to the two which appear to him to be the most formidable.
1. In Rev_20:3 we read that Satan was cast into the abyss, etc., "that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years should be finished." Let it be granted that "the nations" here referred to can hardly be understood in any other sense than that common in the Apocalypse: the heathen, the ungodly, nations or the wicked in general. We then seem to read that there must be a time during which Satan does not "deceive the nations," while the explanation given above has been that he was no sooner subjugated for the righteous than he was let loose to deceive the unrighteous. In his Lectures on the Revelation of St. John (p. 224, note) the author was disposed to plead that the words in question may not have beer intended to indicate that action on Satans part was for a time to cease, but rather to bring out and express that aspect of Satan by which he is specially distinguished in the Apocalypse. In deference to the criticism of the Rev. H. W. Reynolds (Remarks on Dr. Milligans Interpretation of the Apocalypse, pp. 9, 27), he would yield this point. Notwithstanding the irregular constructions of the Apocalypse, it is at least precarious; and it is better to leave a difficulty unsolved, especially in a case where difficulties surround every interpretation yet offered, than to propose solutions of the sufficiency of which even the proposer is doubtful. It may be asked, however, without resorting to the conjecture formerly thrown out, whether the words "that he should deceive," even when taken in what is said to be their only true sense, are irreconcilable with the view of the thousand years advocated in this commentary. - That view is that the subjugation of Satan for a thousand years means his complete subjugation. When, therefore, it is said that he has been so shut up as "to deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years should be finished," the meaning may simply be that in the act of being subjected he was deprived alike of authority and opportunity to deceive the nations. It lay within the power of the Conqueror to grant or not to grant him fresh liberty to do so. The "strong man" was then bound, and "his goods were spoiled." He was completely subjected to Christ. When, therefore, we are told of the thousand years during which he was to deceive the nations no more, this language is only the continuation of the figure used in the second verse of the chapter; and what the Seer intends to express is, that during the process of his subjection, and until he should be again loosed by Him who had subjected him, he could do nothing. Satan, in short, must be permitted to come up out of the abyss either in his own person or by his agents before he can disturb the earth (comp. Rev_9:2); and it is the purpose of God that he shall not have power to disturb it until, having been really "brought to nought" by Christ (comp. Heb_2:14), he shall go forth to his evil work among the nations as one who, whatever may be the increase of his wrath (comp. Rev_12:12), has yet been overcome by another far mightier than himself.
2. The second difficulty demanding notice is presented by the words of Rev_20:5, "The rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished." Who are these called "the rest of the dead," and in what sense did they "live"? The term "the rest," applied to persons, occurs in the following passages of the Apocalypse in addition to that before us: Rev_2:24; Rev_9:20; Rev_11:13; Rev_12:17; Rev_29:1. In every one of these cases it refers to the remaining portion of a class mentioned, but not exhausted; and it cannot be extended to any class beyond them. Here, however, no class has been spoken of except the righteous, or rather the "souls" of the righteous, described by various particulars both of their character and their state. "The rest" of the dead must therefore belong to that class, and to it alone. They cannot be the general body of mankind, both good and bad, with the exception of those previously mentioned. Again, what is meant when it is said that the rest of the dead "lived"? The same word had occurred in the immediately preceding verse, and it must now be understood in the same sense. "If," says Dean Alford, who has been quoted with great confidence against the present writer (Reynolds, u.s., p. 23), "in such a passage the first resurrection may be understood to mean spiritual rising with Christ, while the second means literal rising from the grave, then there is an end of all significance in language; and Scripture is wiped out as a definite testimony to anything. If the first resurrection is spiritual, then so is the second, which I suppose none will be hardy enough to maintain" (on Rev_20:4-6). Now that is exactly what is here maintained. The "lived" of Rev_20:4 is spiritual; the "lived" of Rev_20:5 is also spiritual. The "rest of the dead" then are the Old Testament saints of Rev_6:9, who, by the completion of the Lords redeeming work, were brought up to the level of the New Testament Church. The meaning of Rev_20:5 may thus be said to be that, the New Testament Church having had first bestowed upon it a complete redemption, the same white robes were afterwards given to the Old Testament Church, the succession being again one of thought rather than time. In this way all the members of Christs body are marked out as having been "dead" before they lived, thus identifying them with their Lord in Rev_1:18; the position of the words at the close of Rev_20:5, "this is the first resurrection," is rendered more natural by their thus following what is wholly a description of the condition of the blessed, instead of having a sentence interposed of an entirely different character; and, finally, to say nothing of the contextual consideration already referred to, the full Johannine force of the word "lived" is preserved.
These answers to the two chief difficulties associated with the interpretation here suggested of the thousand years may not be satisfactory to all; but it is submitted that they go far at least to meet them, and that in themselves they are neither unfair nor strained. Against one thing only must the author of this commentary enter his most decided protest, - the allegation that the interpretation here offered is gained by dispensing with textual criticism (?) and by sacrificing grammar to an idea. If there be one ground more than another upon which it rests, it is upon the strictest principles of historical interpretation. It ought only to be remembered that the idiosyncrasies of an author are as much a part of such interpretation as the literal meaning of his words; and that to that interpretation, if honestly and thoroughly conducted, the most deeply ingrained prejudices will in due time be compelled to submit.
The three great enemies of the Church have not only been overcome, but judged, and forever removed from all possibility of troubling the righteous more. But the great mass of the wicked have not yet been overtaken by a similar fate. The time has now come to show us in vision what awaits them also: -
"And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat upon it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne; and books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, even the lake of fire. And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire (Rev_20:11-15)."
Upon various particulars mentioned in this passage it is unnecessary to say much. The throne beheld by the Seer is great, at once in contrast with the "thrones" of the millennial reign, and as befitting the majesty of Him who sits upon it. It is also white, as emblematic of His purity and holiness. The Judge is God, the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father; and thus the judgment is searching and complete, and is answered by the consciences of those upon whom it is executed. They see that the Judges eye penetrates into the most secret recesses of their hearts, and that He is One who has been in the same position, has fought the same battle, and has endured the same trials as themselves. Thus His sentence finds an echo in their hearts, and they are speechless.* Thus also judgment becomes really judgment, and not merely the infliction of punishment by resistless power. (*Comp. Mat_22:12)
The effect of the Judge s taking His seat upon His throne was that from His face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. Yet we are not to understand that after their flight there was neither an earth nor a heaven to be found. It is only the old earth and the old heaven that are spoken of; and almost immediately afterwards the Seer exclaims, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away."1 The change is part of that "restoration of all things" of which St. Peter spoke to the multitude gathered together in Solomons porch,2 of which he then added, "Whereof God spake by the mouth of His holy prophets which have been since the world began," and upon which he dwelt more fully in his second Epistle when he said, "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. But, according to His promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."3 In the Epistle to the Romans, too, "creation" longs, not for destruction, but for something akin to that "liberty of the glory of the children of God" which they shall obtain along with their "adoption, to wit, the redemption of their body."4 In all these passages it is not the translation of Gods saints to an immaterial sphere that lies at the bottom of the thought. It is rather the idea of change, of the trans figuration, of the glorification, of this present scene into a state corresponding with that of its redeemed inhabitants, when they shall "not be unclothed, but clothed upon,"5 and shall dwell in "spiritual bodies."6 To St. John "heaven" is not an abode of bliss in a scene of which we can form no clear conception, but the spiritual atmosphere in which, alike on this side the grave and on the other, the saints live and move. The "dwellers upon earth" are not those who simply tread its firm soil and breathe its atmosphere, but those who are worldly in their spirit and whose views are bounded by the things of time. The kingdom which Christ establishes is the "kingdom of this world" in its cleansed and purified condition rather than one to which we travel by long and unknown paths. As the Seer looks forward to the future there is nothing to show that he thinks of any other residence for man than that which the Son consecrated by His tomb in Josephs garden and by the glory of the resurrection morning; and even the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven to be established upon earth. (1 Rev_21:1 2 Act_3:21; 3 2Pe_3:10; 2Pe_3:13; 4 Rom_8:21-23; 5 2Co_5:4; 6Comp. 1Co_15:44)
Many may doubtless think that such a hope is too earthly, too material, to be suited to the spiritual nature of the Christian dispensation. They fear that it has a tendency to withdraw us from Him who is "spirit," and who must be worshipped, if He is to be worshipped acceptably, "in spirit and truth."1 But any such apprehension is at variance with the fundamental fact of our Christian faith, the incarnation of our Lord, and is little less than the revival of the old Manichean heresy that matter is essentially evil. Two errors have existed, and may exist, in the Church upon this point. We may strip the Gospel of its spiritual element, and may reduce it to a system of outward and material forms, or we may strip it of its material element, and may resolve it into a vague and shadowy mysticism. Both are the errors of extremes, and it would be difficult to say which has wrought most havoc in the Church. If the one was disastrous in the days of the supremacy of Romanism, the other is hardly less disastrous now. To the false and spurious spiritualism which it engenders we owe not a few of the most serious misconceptions of the present time with regard to the person of Christ, the Church, the Sacraments, and the purpose of redemption as a whole.2 (1 Joh_4:24; 2In connection with the point here spoken of, reference may be made to an interesting and instructive paper by Canon Dale Stewart Rector of Coulsdon, in The Churchman for December, 1887.)
To return to the main question in connection with the passage before us. Does it present us with the picture of a general judgment or of a judgment of the wicked alone? There is much in the passage that leads distinctly to the latter conclusion.
1. The whole vision is obviously an enlargement of what we have already met under the seventh Trumpet, when it was said that "the time of the dead to be judged came."* In both visions the persons spoken of as "the dead" must be the same; and they are clearly distinguished in the earlier vision from those called "Thy servants the prophets," the season of whose "reward" was come. With this corresponds the fact that in the writings of St. John the words "to judge" and "judgment" are always used, not in a neutral sense, but in one tending to condemnation. Without some qualifying term the Apostle could hardly have applied them to the acquittal of the righteous. (* Rev_11:18)
2. The sources whence the "dead" are gathered confirm this conclusion. These are three in number: the sea, death, and Hades. Looking first at the two last of these, it is plain that "death" cannot in this connection be the neutral grave, for it is "cast into the lake of fire," where the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are. Similar remarks apply to "Hades," which in Rev_6:8 is the coadjutor of death, and which in the New Testament always appears as a region of gloom, and punishment, and opposition to the truth: " And thou, Capernaum, shalt thou be exalted unto heaven? thou shalt go down unto Hades; "And I also say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."* If such be the sense in which we are to understand death and Hades, light is thrown upon the manner in which we are to interpret the first of the three sources, - "the sea." This cannot be the ocean, because the number of those to be given up from its depths at the last day is comparatively small; because, as the literal sea, it is in no way suitably associated with death and Hades; and because, when we read in Rev_21:1, "And the sea is no more," it is impossible to think that the word is used in any other than a figurative sense. No reason can be imagined why, when the earth is renewed, there should be no more that sea which is one grand instrument of its present greatness and glory. Besides all this, we have hitherto found that in the Apocalypse the "sea" is the emblem of the unruly and troubled nations of the earth, and the source from which the first beast of chap. 13 had his origin. In the same sense therefore we must understand it here. Like "death" and "Hades," "the sea" spoken of can give up none but ungodly dead to the judgment of the great day. (* Mat_11:23; Mat_16:18)
3. The "books" mentioned in the passage are clearly books containing the record of evil deeds alone. When it is said that "books" were opened, and that "another book was opened, which is the book of life," the "books" are distinguished from the "book." It harmonizes with this that the book of life is not opened in order to secure deliverance for those whose names are inscribed in it, but only to justify the sentence passed on any who are cast into the lake of fire.
4. The general teaching of St. John ought not to be lost sight of in considering this question. That teaching is that the eternal condition of the righteous is fully secured to them even in this life, and that in their glorified Head they have already passed through all those preparatory stages on their way to everlasting blessedness at the thought of which they might otherwise have trembled. In Him they have lived, and overcome, and died. In Him they have been raised from the dead, and been seated in the heavenly places. All along they have followed the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, and everything that befell Him has in principle befallen them. We cannot say, in the Johannine sense of the word, that Christ has been "judged;" and therefore "judgment" cannot be predicated of the members of His Body. To these last "judgment," we have already seen, "was given" at the time when they entered on their millennial reign; and, with the result of this judgment (for that is the true meaning of the original) in their hands, it is impossible to think of them as judged again.
The judgment of these verses is therefore a judgment of the wicked; and, when it is closed, all Christs enemies have not only been vanquished, but have been banished from the scene where He is to reign " before His ancients gloriously."* The first part of the final triumph has been accomplished. (* Isa_24:23)
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv1–10 1–3. And I saw an angel come down from…
1–3. And I saw an angel come down from heaven with a chain, and the key of the abyss. The abyss is named in Rev. 9:1, 11; in 11:7, and 17:8. It is the present abode of Satan and his evil spirits. The things seen by John are symbolical. They imply that in some way the power of Satan shall be virtually destroyed upon the earth.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 EMINENT expositors, ancient and modern, regard the opening of…
THE THOUSAND YEARS
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
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EMINENT expositors, ancient and modern, regard the opening of this chapter as referring to an early period in the history of the Church, but there are many writers who consider the events as occurring in immediate succession to those foreshown in the end of chap. 19. Stuart points out the intentional brevity with which this portion of the prophecy is treated. “The events of a thousand years; the invasion of Gog and Magog, with their defeat; the ultimate confinement and punishment of Satan; and, lastly, the general judgment;—are all crowded into the space of twelve verses. This shows that the very distant future is designed to be merely glanced at by the writer. So it is with the Hebrew prophets. But here there is a special reason for brevity. The main object of the book is already accomplished. Christians have been consoled by assurances that all the enemies with whom the Church was then conflicting, would surely be overthrown. To complete an epic plan which involves a climactic progression of events, and to gratify the taste and feelings, the last part of the book is added. It seems to be added mainly for this purpose. Mere touches and glances are all which it exhibits, or which were intended to be exhibited. The eye of hope is directed forward, and sees the thousand years of uninterrupted prosperity; then the sudden destruction of a new and final enemy, and all the rest is left to joyful anticipation.
Rev_20:1. Bottomless pit.—Explained in note on Rev_9:1.
Rev_20:2. Old serpent.—See on Rev_12:9. Thousand years.—A figurative, not literal, period. With the Lord “a thousand years is as one day.” It is safer to regard it as representing a prolonged, in contrast with a limited, period.
Rev_20:4. Thrones.—Compare Dan_7:9; Dan_7:22. There seem to be two classes of faithful souls introduced: those who had made the martyrs’ testimony, and those who had given the testimony of noble lives. Reigned with Christ.—A figure for that kind of ruling power and influence which steadfast and heroic men and women always gain and exercise wherever they may be, even as Christ gained and exercised.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Rev_20:1-15
The Millennium-Picture.—The millennium-vision is, like so many of the apostolic visions, an ideal picture; it exhibits a state of things which is possible to mankind at any time. The vision has its approximate fulfilment, as the Church, in the faith of the reality of her Lord’s victory, carries on her warfare against the prince of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places. That this approximate fulfilment is not unreal may be seen in the fact that Christendom has replaced heathendom; Christ has taken the throne of the world; the prince of this world has been judged; the ascendency of Christian thought and Christian principles has marvellously humanised and purified the world. To an Irenæus, a Polycarp, a Justin Martyr, a Tertullian, the picture of the world during the Christian centuries would have the aspect of a millennium, when contrasted with the age of Pagan dominion and Pagan persecution. In their eyes, accustomed to the darkness of heathenism, the world, as influenced by a widely-diffused Christianity, would seem to be a world in which Christ ruled. They would see, in the acknowledgment, of apostles and martyrs and confessors, the wondrous resurrection-power of God’s truth; they would see how they, who fell for Christ, had stepped from their forgotten graves to sit down with Christ in His throne. The apostles, the martyrs, the faithful, do reign with Christ. The sovereignty of the world belongs far more to St. Paul and St. John than to Nero or Galba. But though thus the saints rise and reign with Christ over Christendom, we can see that this is only an approximate realisation, and falls short of the ideal picture. Christendom established and heathendom overthrown would be a millennium in the eyes of an Ignatius; but the Church of to day looks for a further and higher fulfilment. Is she justified in this expectation? If the principles we have laid down are correct, she is justified. She can accept the first-fruits of God’s promises, but she will not mistake them for the harvest; she can rejoice in the growth of her Lord’s kingdom, but she looks for the day when the powers of evil will be more effectually curbed, and the gospel will have freer course. Then the fulness of Christ’s victory will be more clearly seen.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 20
Rev_20:12. The Final Judgment; The Certainty of Its Decisions.—There is a machine in the Bank of England which receives sovereigns, as a mill receives grain, for the purpose of determining wholesale whether they are are of full weight. As they pass through, the machinery, by unerring laws, throws all that are light to one side, and all that are of full weight to another. That process is a silent but solemn parable for me. Founded as it is upon the laws of nature, it affords the most vivid similitude of the certainty which characterises the judgment of the great day. There are no mistakes or partialities to which the light may trust; the only hope lies in being of standard weight before they go in.—Arnot.
The Record of Our Lives.—With every turn of the turnstile on Waterloo Bridge a record (in the old time) was made against the gatekeeper, and he could not recall or obliterate it. Every movement of the wind over Greenwich Observatory, steady or capricious, fast or slow, is self-registered, with pencil and paper, by an apparatus communicating to a room below, in which blank paper is presented to the pencil by clockwork; and these autobiographical memoirs are carefully preserved. So constant and unerring is the record kept in the book of God’s remembrance concerning all our actions, and even “every idle word that men shall speak” (Mat_12:36).
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v1 SIX thousand years have rolled away amid the dismal…
SATAN’S ARREST AND INCARCERATION
SIX thousand years have rolled away amid the dismal night of Satan’s reign. Terrific has been the probationary ordeal. Hell’s harvest has swept on and on through the forlorn and dreary ages. Perdition has devoured a hundred generations, with an exception here and there. Humanity without God has proved a miserable failure in every dispensation. The Antediluvian world became so awfully wicked that God saw that existence simply meant damnation. Hence, in mercy, He must sweep them from the earth. Likewise, each Post-diluvian Dispensation has gone on from bad to worse, till the wickedness of the nations and the abominations of fallen Churches have culminated in the terrible judgments of the great tribulation, which has swept the unsavable into perdition. Satan hath wrought valiantly, and hell is well filled. Since the inauguration of the premillennial judgments inflicted by the Ancient of Days against a wicked world and fallen Church, the tide of most disastrous defeat has set against the devil. For six thousand years he was the custodian of hell, having charge of the key, which he turned against countless millions, sparing neither age, sex, rank, dignity, priest, nor potentate. Revelation 9 th exhibits him in sole possession the key of the bottomless pit. Amid the awful reverses which he suffered during the Armageddon conflicts, among other terrible losses, the key of hell is wrested from him.
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1. It is now in the hands of the police-angel, descending from heaven with a great chain. Behold, he arrests the devil like a common desperado, binds him hand and foot with the chain, takes the key and unlocks the pandemonium of unquenchable fire, casts him into a dismal, gloomy dungeon, locks him up, and puts the seal of the Almighty on the ponderous iron door: “No exit for the next thousand years!” This is an awful day in Satan’s eventful history. He has seen the trophies of six thousand years of successful warfare all vanish into the night of dark despair. For ages kings, potentates, popes, and priests have been his loyal subjects. They have all fallen and perished. Pope and Mahomet, the last of all to survive the wreck of premillennial judgments, have been precipitated into the burning lake. Hence he now stands alone, as when he invaded Eden six thousand years ago. The very solitude of his situation is appalling in the extreme. He sees the sheriff of the heavenly government approaching to lay violent hands on him. His adamantine heart melts with cowardice. Trembling in his boots for his inevitable doom, he succumbs to his fate. Already the sweeping revival conducted by the King of glory and the transfigured saints of His bridehood has compassed the globe, girdled the continents, and inundated all nations with the glories of entire sanctification, which is the millennial experience. Therefore, the long- prayed-for sunburst of the heavenly glory has already come down on the world, and the millennium has come, and come to stay. Jesus reigns, and reigns victorious over heaven and earth most glorious. The dismal night of sin, hiding millions of cruel devils, spreading devastation and death throughout the world, has retreated before the bright effulgence of the glorious millennial day. Truly, the halcyon days of dear old Eden have come back. Don’t you hear the ring of the anvil? They are even now beating the bloody swords of war into plowshares and the cruel spears into pruning-hooks. The Omnipotent Healer is here, and sickness is fast becoming unknown. Physicians have thrown away their pill-bags, and turned to Holiness evangelists. The dark memories of Satan’s bloody reign of a thousand weary years are fast fading away and sinking into oblivion.
Glory to God for a world without a devil in it! Satan and his myrmidons have all retreated away, to trouble the world no more for the next thousand years.
During the long reign of sin, the earth has been terribly abused, brutalized, barbarized, beggarized, and impoverished. Under the pacific reign of our glorious King, co-operated in every city, village, island, and continent by His transfigured saints, whose delight will be to rule in wisdom, instruction, righteousness, and love, the waste lands will be repaired and fertilized, the marshes drained and transformed into fruitful fields, and the deserts irrigated and metamorphosed into blooming gardens. After the ejectment of Satan and his myrmidons, and the consequent expurgation of the diabolical institutions out of the world, the castigatory judgments of God will cease.
The fruits, no longer nipped by frost nor blighted by drought, will literally burden the fields with their inexhaustible exuberance. The rich will delight in relieving the poor, till poverty shall actually depart from the whole earth. Wisdom, industry, enterprise, disinterested philanthropy, and spontaneous benefactions, under the benignant reign of Prince Immanuel, will transform the earth into a paradise. Thus the Edenic state, when humanity walked with God, in blissful ignorance of Satan and his devices, after the long, dreary night of six thousand years, has actually come back, and come to stay. Sickness and sorrow have alike retreated away, and the generations are approximating Antediluvian longevity. Translation without dying was the original economy of the Edenic state. Presumptively translation, in millennial times, will again become common.
RESURRECTION OF THE TRIBULATION SAINTS
4. “I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, who did not worship the beast, nor his image, and did not receive his mark upon their foreheads, and upon their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” Judgment, in this quotation, means the government of the world. Hence the problem is settled, without controversy, that the risen and translated martyrs will rule the world, as the subordinates of Christ, during the millennium. Paul assures us, in 1Th 4:13-18, that Christ, when He comes to reign, will bring with Him “those who sleep in Jesus.” In the same Scripture, he notifies us that the Lord will come after those who sleep in Jesus and take them up, before He brings them down with Him.
In our Savior’s sermon on the judgments, which He preached on Mt. Olivet the day before He was crucified (Matthew 24; Mark 13; and Luke 21), describing His coming in the premillennial judgment, He says: “Two men shall be in a field; one is taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one is taken, and the other left.” He also says:
“When the Son of man cometh, He will send forth His angels to gather His elect out of the four quarters of the earth, from one extremity of the heavens, even unto the other extremity.”
Now this cannot be the final judgment; for at that time all the people on the earth, both living and dead, will be taken, whereas you see, in this judgment, only the elect are taken. These Scriptures confirm, beyond controversy, the doctrine of the rapture; i.e., that our Lord will come before the tribulation and take up His elect — i.e., the members of His bridehood — raising the dead and translating the living. Dan 12:1 says: “Every one written in the book shall be delivered” from that awful “time of trouble,” such as the world has never seen, and never will again.
Hence, the first resurrection will take place before the great tribulation and the terrible premillennial judgments set in, when the Lord takes up His bride. Then, what is this resurrection (Rev 20:4)? It is a supplement to the first resurrection, for the especial benefit of the tribulation saints. None but the wholly sanctified will go up in the rapture. As we see in the case of the virgins (Mat 25:1-13), the unsanctified will be left. They are simply called foolish because they did not get their vessels filled with oil; i.e., get sanctified. So the Holy Ghost calls all the Christians in the world “foolish” who do not go forward into entire sanctification. Had not these foolish virgins lost their religion? The English would so indicate. But it is a wrong translation. The Greek does not say, “Our lamps are gone out;” but, “Our lamps are going out;” i.e., they are burning low. As none but those who are filled with the Holy Ghost can enter the marriage-supper, therefore the foolish virgins were excluded-not from the kingdom of grace, unless they afterward let their lamps go out, but from the bridehood of Christ. Lighting the lamp is regeneration, the first work of grace. When this was done, the virgins were all alike. Afterward, five heeded the call of wisdom and got their vessels filled with oil — i.e. the Holy Ghost — i.e., wholly sanctified. Meanwhile, the other five so egregiously manifested their lack of true wisdom, by not getting their vessels filled with oil — i.e., entirely sanctified-that inspiration designates them “foolish virgins.” Thus, when our Lord takes up His bride, all the Christians on the earth who are not filled with the Holy Ghost — i.e., sanctified wholly — will be left to stem the horrors of the tribulation.
Amid the awful troubles which shall flood the whole earth, testing all souls to the bottom, in the utter absence of all the sanctified people, it is to be feared that the great majority will backslide and lose their souls. However, to our comfort, we see from this Scripture that some will get sanctified during the tribulation and persevere to the end. But it is a significant fact that they will all have their heads cut off. Antichrist will rally his bloodthirsty millions against those who refuse to worship the beast and his image — i.e., the world and its fashion — and do not receive the mark of the beast on their persons. Strong drink, tobacco opium, gluttony, licentiousness, the corset, jewelry and all vain, gay, needless ornamentation, are the marks of the carnal beast, by which he designates the victims of sin, death, and damnation. It is a significant fact that every one of these suffered the cruel martyrdom of decapitation. “Souls” here, pursuant to common parlance, simply means persons. At the beginning of this verse, John says, “I saw thrones.” Presumptively, these thrones are occupied by the members of the bridehood, who have gone up in the rapture. They now reign with Christ over the nations. At the millennium, they are joined in their administration by all the tribulation martyrs, who are now raised from the dead and honored with the participation in the millennial theocracy.
5. “The rest of the dead live not till the thousand years may be fulfilled. This is the first resurrection.” From this verse you see that the first resurrection will only include the martyrs. It is an impressive fact that the same Greek word means “martyr” and “witness” Hence, in order to be a true witness for Jesus, you must have the martyr spirit; i.e., be constantly ready to suffer martyrdom. If you are really a true witness for Jesus under all circumstances, even at the peril of your life, the Holy Ghost calls you a martyr, whether you ever seal your faith with your blood or not. The Scriptures positively confirm the conclusion that all except the martyrs will sleep on in the sepulchral dust till the great white throne shall set and the final resurrection shall supervene. Oh, Blessed and holy is he that has Part in the first resurrection; over these the second death hath no power. but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. The word “holy” in this verse is the same word which means sanctified. This word, with its synonyms, occurs six hundred times in the Bible. Oh, what an inspiration to every soul to get sanctified wholly. Why does the second death have no power over the participants of the first resurrection? Because they have passed their probation, and now occupy their transfigured bodies. Did not the angels fall and become devils? This took place while passing through their probationary state. Evidently all created intelligences are originally on probation. Doubtless the inhabitants of those heavenly worlds nave long ago completed their probation. Hence we hear of no more apostasy. So it is with all who enjoy a part in the first resurrection. Being raised and translated when our Lord comes to reign, their probation having ended, they will enjoy the transfigured glory, forever triumphant over the second death. Of course, even the saints who shall live upon the earth during subsequent ages, in their mortal bodies, will still be on probation, exposed to temptations, liable to fall, and finally incur the horrors of the second death. This verse clearly assures us that all the participants of the first resurrection, whether risen or translated, will reign with Christ a thousand years. Oh, blessed assurance and thrilling inspiration, driving all indifference, stupidity, and ennui beyond the North Pole. Just to think that our Savior is liable to descend this moment, raise His buried saints, translate the living, invest us with a crown and a scepter, and promote us to a throne to participate in His glorious millennial reign.
SATAN’S POST-MILLENNIAL INVASION AND FINAL DEFEAT
7. The millennial ages have flown. A thousand years of Paradisian prosperity and happiness have rolled away. Meanwhile the inhabitants of earth have never heard the grim tocsin of war, the balmy breezes of universal peace, laden with the aroma of perennial fruits and flowers, having circled the globe a thousand years. All the theaters have been turned into Churches, the saloons into depositories for Bibles and Holiness books, the race-fields and penitentiaries into Holiness camp-grounds. Long ago the bloody memories of sin, darkness, trouble, sorrow, death, and damnation have sunk into oblivion, eternally eclipsed by the effulgent glories of the millennial reign. Earth is basking in the sunshine of heaven, not dreaming that she will ever sorrow again. Why did God let the devil out of hell? a thousand years had rolled away; meanwhile millennial glory has belted the globe from the rising of the sun to his going down. Generation after generation has brightened the world with their holy lives, and swept into heaven with a tremendous boom, thus populating the city of God with the teeming millions of the millennial world. Dog-fennel and pennyroyal have overgrown the road to hell. Meanwhile Satan is muttering in the deep, dark dungeon of the pandemonium: “Yes, Son of God, of course you can have everything your own way while you keep the hound with this chain in the gloomy old prison of the bottomless pit. I dare you to let me out! I will show you that the boasted religion of all these Holiness fanatics, whose roaring shouts have been my constant annoyance the last thousand years, is all hypocritical bosh. Just let me out, give me a tilt at that old world, and I can upset the whole compoodle.” Do you not see that it will be for the glory of Christ to let him try his hand? What floods of light, glory, and consolation have swept down the ages, emanating from the terrible afflictions of Job, when God turned him over to the devil to test the solidity of his religion So will the glory of God flash out with unprecedented brilliancy from Satan’s final assault on humanity, and move down the ages of eternity with incessantly accumulating luster.
8. We see from this verse that Satan’s army, with which he essays to conquer the world, is made up of Gog and Magog. Now let us see who they are. In Noah’s family originated the trinity of races. Ham in Hebrew means black; Shem, red; and Japheth, white. Upon the subsidence of the Flood, Noah divided the world among his three sons, giving Ham Africa, Shem Asia, and Japheth Europe. Gog and Magog are only spoken of in this passage, Genesis 10 th, and Ezekiel 38 th. Gog means king, and Magog means the kingly people; i.e., the nobility. Genesis 10 th notifies us that they are the children of Japheth, the ancestor of all the white people. In Ezekiel 38 th they are elaborately mentioned as resident in Russia. There is too much religion in the world, after millennial holiness has belted the globe a thousand years, for Satan to attack it as a roaring lion. Meanwhile the tide of millennial glory is moving around the world with unabated momentum, and not a human being is dreaming of Satan’s awful exit from the bottomless pit, and his impending raid into Immanuel’s kingdom. Behold, Diabolus evacuates the pandemonium, transforms himself into a great political and military leader, like Napoleon Bonaparte — perhaps in the very person of the Russian Czar — enters this world with royal pomp and pageantry, everywhere haranguing the multitude, aspiring to captivate them by his learned and eloquent speeches and disaffect them toward King Immanuel, and render them dissatisfied with His administration, at the same time doing his utmost to persuade them to revolt and set up an independent government, in which he offered them the most perfect freedom, as well as the grandest official emoluments. He enjoys the wonderful convenience of locomotion at lightning speed. (Luk 18:10.) He finds multitudes of followers among all the Japhethetic — i.e., white — races, especially in Russia. It is a significant fact, at the present day, that the Japhethetic races rule the world. The great princes, potentates, millionaires, gold-bugs, and railroad kings are white men. With no devil to lead them, they quietly submit during the long ages of the millennial reign. Meanwhile they muse much on their illustrious ancestry, who possessed the money and ruled the world. Now Satan arouses them by his blandishing speeches, and inflates them with glowing aspirations to regain their lost power and rule the world again. You must remember that the millennial generations will be born with depraved hearts, as we are. In the absence of the devil to stir that depravity, and actuated by the transfigured agencies of saving grace, they will be converted before they lose their infantile justification, and sanctified before they backslide. Hence a gigantic Christianity will fill the world. When Satan comes out of hell he makes his adroit appeals to this hereditary depravity. With paradoxical expedition he traverses all nations, tip-toeing and vociferating the eloquent appeals of his stentorian voice in the ears of countless multitudes. You must remember, at that time the world will have a tremendous population — ten, and perhaps a hundred, times as large as at the present day. Among the descendants of the old nabob families of the different white races, he receives a large following; but among Shemites and Hamites he receives no response. There are at present three hundred millions of negroes in Africa. Doubtless, by the close of the millennium, they will number three thousand millions. The negro is intuitively more religious than the white man. When all the negroes in Africa have shouted full salvation a thousand years, the Dark Continent checkered with railroads and illuminated with Holiness camp-grounds and colleges, those grand old Ethiopians will stand flatfooted, throw their big mouths open, and shout the devil out of countenance, till he will be glad to retreat crest- fallen from the land of Ham, without a single follower. The Mongolian races, at the present day, are estimated at eight hundred millions. They constitute the mighty nations of the Orient. Presumptively, they will number eight thousand millions by the close of the millennium. Immutability is the striking peculiarity of the Orientals. When the almond- eyed Chinaman has rung out the hallelujahs of entire sanctification a thousand years, he will not be captured by Satan’s sophistical promises to make him a mandarin. Hence the devil will make a total failure with the numberless sons of Shem, who people the mighty East. War is something quite new in the world. Not a gun has been fired in the last thousand years. From the days of Peter the Great, who predicted that the bear should lie down on the banks of the Indian Ocean, Russia has had her eye on the Holy Land.
9. Satan now musters the innumerable hosts of Gog and Magog, and coils them around Jerusalem like a huge boa-constrictor. By the close of the millennium, doubtless Jerusalem, the capital of the millennial kingdom, will be the metropolis of the world. The site is the finest on the globe for the metropolitanship of the world. It is the geographical center of the six grand divisions of the earth — the most accessible spot beneath the skies. The very earth rests on the finest building material in the world, and at the same time the inexhaustible fertilizer of soils. I doubt not but at that time Jerusalem will extend over the vast interior highlands of Palestine. The people are not alarmed. The King of Glory reigns on the earth. Satan’s army encompasses Jerusalem with impunity, inspired by their audacious leader, sanguine of success, as they see no enemy arrayed against them. A thousand years ago the Lord’s people transformed all their military equipage into farming implements, and committed the keeping of their country to the glorious King. Their faith is unshaken by the clangor of arms and the glitter of a million swords in the splendor of a Palestinian sun. The Eastern skies are illuminated with the gorgeous eclat of Satan’s royal army. The devil, from his magnificent portable pavilion, issues command through a thousand swift couriers to put the battle in array against the holy city. At that moment Omnipotence interposes, fire comes down from heaven, and utterly consumes Satan’s army.
10. Now Satan is again arrested, and cast into the lake of fire, this interposition giving a final termination to his post-millennial and last campaign against this world. Never again will he be permitted to put his foot on it. You see that it will be much for the glory of Christ to let the devil test the millennial world. He would always have said that he could abduce them into rebellion against God if an opportunity had been given. Floods of light and truth emanate from Satan’s post-millennial campaign against this world.
(a) As the long war between Christ and Satan is destined to wind up, the problem of his final destiny presents itself for solution. Here we have an irrefutable confirmation of his utter and hopeless irreclaimability. After suffering the unutterable horrors of a hell-prison a thousand years, we find him just as proud, arrogant, ambitious, and bloodthirsty as when he ruled the world with a rod of iron. With what promptitude and alacrity lie proceeds at once to ruin the world again!
(b) It is also a confirmation of hereditary depravity, even surviving the swelling floods of millennial grace a thousand years. This is evidenced by the mighty revolt of Gog and Magog.
(c) It is also a confirmation of the wonderful triumphs of millennial grace, in the fact that Satan makes a total failure with all the world, except Gog and Magog.
(d) The divine intervention which pours fire on Satan’s army besieging Jerusalem, and utterly exterminating them, involves the consolatory assurance that God will never again permit Satan to prevail against the human race.
(e) It forever refutes the Universalian dogma of remedial punishment, as Satan had the benefit of it a thousand years, and came out just as he went in, and had to be sent back again. Hence, this confirms the irremedial doom of all the wicked when they leave this world. We have a repetition of the Greek phrase, which so frequently occurs in the New Testament, eis tous aioonastoon aioonoon, defining the duration of the punishment in reservation for the devil, the beast, the false prophet, and all their followers. The English translates it “forever and ever.” More literally it would read, “unto ages of ages, or, eternities of eternities.” The very same phrase tells how long the saints will live in glory, and how long God will exist. Hence the infallible logic of the Holy Ghost settles the question beyond possible cavil that hell will smoke so long as heaven shouts. The wicked will suffer the horrors of the burning lake so long as the righteous rejoice in the presence of God, and so long as God Himself shall live.
THE FINAL JUDGMENT (Rev 11:15)
The great white throne now dazzles the gaze of earth’s teeming millions. The wicked multitudes who have lived on the earth in all bygone ages now respond to the archangel’s trump and come forth. We have here no account of the Lord’s coming, because He has been here ever since the beginning of the millennium. How long the post-millennial ages will last we can have no definite idea. Hence, perhaps the millennial glory will shine on and bless the world long ages after the expiration of the scheduled thousand years.
Isa 53:8 : “Who shall declare His generation? For He was cut off out of the land of the living.” In this chapter a millennial Jew stands on the heights of prophetic illumination, looks back two thousand years, bewails the blindness of his people in the first coming of his Lord, which utterly disqualified them to recognize Him, but left them to the caprices of the devil, who infatuated them to nail Him to the cross. “Generation” here means race or posterity. If Christ had not died, He would have had no spiritual offspring. If the acorn does not die, it will never produce the giant oak. In regeneration, ye are born; in sanctification, you die. If you do not die — i.e., get sanctified — the normal conclusion follows that you will have no posterity. The interrogation, “Who shall declare His generation?” means that neither man nor angel can enumerate the mighty multitudes of God’s spiritual children in Christ. We are living in the age of darkness, sin, Satan, and damnation, in which hell is devouring the multitudes of earth, and Jesus says: “The saved are few” (Luk 13:23). Hence the present age is hell’s great harvest. The millennium will be heaven’s great harvest. Such will be the flooded populations and the sweeping tide of salvation inundating the world, in the blissful absence of the devil, through the long run of the millennial ages, that in the grand finale, when the infinitesimal multitudes of Adam’s race shall stand before the great white throne, the innumerable hosts, saved by the triumphant Christ, will so vastly outnumber the motley rabble of Satan’s conquest as to throw it into eternal eclipse. As the Son of God will encumber the final judgment- throne, this notable epoch will produce no interregnum in His continuous reign from His descension on the cloud at the beginning of the millennium, and in no way conflict with the eternal perpetuity of His reign on the earth. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil and eternally expel him from this world, as well as the universe of God.
“The books were opened.” These are the books of record in the plural number, because they are many. They contain the record of all the sins committed by the wicked, and all the good works of the righteous Neither the sins of the righteous nor the good deeds of the wicked will be mentioned in the judgment. The popular idea of this judgment going through in twenty-four hours is a great mistake. Day, in the Bible, means a period. God will take plenty of time. What is the utility of this judgment? It is demonstrative of human character, and vindicatory of the Divine administration. God does not need it to find out what to do with you. Every soul in the universe is either condemned or acquitted every moment of its existence. Your condemnation dates from your sin. The infinite dissimilitude which characterizes the whole world will continue through all eternity. Hence infinitesimal will be the degrees of punishment in hell and reward in heaven. The benignity of God requires the presence of the entire human race, and especially all of the guardian angels, in this final adjudication of all human destiny. Human courts, in all ages, have condemned the innocent and honored the guilty. This is the grand appellate court of the universe, which will reverse all the maladministrations of all ages, and rectify all wrongs, and settle all issues forever. Here every character will be thoroughly ventilated, elucidated, and illustrated, so every soul will receive his real status and appropriate attitude for all eternity.
Book of life is in the singular number. It is simply a roll of the names of all the saved people. Doubtless this book will be very voluminous. Does the Holy Ghost now witness to you that your name is written in this book? Here we are informed that all whose names are not found superscribed in this book will be cast into the lake of fire. We are notified that death and hell are also cast into the lake of fire. The Bible tells us that hell is now beneath the surface of the earth. Geology reveals that the entire globe is liquid fire except the solid crust, about forty miles in thickness, which forms the exterior. Hence science fully corroborates the Bible on the location of hell. Since this earth, with its entire environments, is to be completely expurgated from sin and all of its contaminations, we readily see the pertinency in the removal of hell from the earth’s interior. Our Savior, in His gospels, frequently alludes to the location of the fiery lake in outer darkness. The Greek, “To nothos to exooteron”; i.e., the darkness which is without. Now where is that darkness containing the lake of fire, into which the devil and all his followers are to be cast? Telescopic observation has revealed one hundred and seventeen millions of suns already discovered in the celestial universe. Evidently our sun gives good light at Neptune, three thousand millions of miles distant. Then to what distance will the combined illumination of one hundred and seventeen millions of suns transmit light? The mathematical genius of an archangel can never answer this question. The distance is absolutely not only inexpressible, but inconceivable. An angel, flying with the velocity of lightning, could not traverse that space in a thousand millions of years. Hence we see the devil and his followers can never return to disturb the peaceful universe of the Almighty. Then how can they ever get there? The Omnipotent arm can transmit them thither in the twinkling of an eye.
Thus you see how the Omnipotent Savior is preparing utterly and eternally to banish sin and all its votaries from the universe of God. While the judgment is in progress, the earth will be passing through a series of purgatorial cremations. (2Pe 3:10.) This world was converted in Noah’s time, when it was expurgated of all sinners and baptized with water. That is not sufficient for its admission into heaven. It must receive the second blessing and be baptized with fire. This fiery baptism will thoroughly sanctify it, not only from all sin, actual and original, but from all the effects of sin. The Creator will again resume His work amid these potent fiery agencies, re-create the world, and transform it into a celestial sphere.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 "And the Books were Opened.".
Rev 20:11
"And the Books were Opened.".
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What are the books to be read? We are not told their title, but I think we may make some conjecture.
I. The first book will be the book of the law of God. Just as in our courts of justice the laws of the realm are always near at hand, that in any doubtful case they may be appealed to, so, I think, the first book will be the book of the revealed will of the holy and just God, a record of the laws and measures by which men will be tried.
II. The next book will be the book of the Gospel. Side by side with the volume of the law will stand the volume of God’s love contained in the Gospel, the wondrous record of all that is done by God for man.
III. The third book will be the book of the dealings of God’s Holy Spirit with the fallen family of man. Some of us may have already lost sight of the striving of the Holy Spirit with us; but God does not forget it: God does not lose sight of it.
IV. The book of God’s providence will be opened. In it is kept, without any possibility of mistake, a record of all God’s dealings with us externally. God is ever seeking by His providential dealings to bring us to Him.
V. The book of our life will be opened. Every one of us is writing a book; we are every one of us authors, although we may never have written a book, not even a line, in our lives. Though we may never have dreamt of printing a book, yet we are dictating to the recording angel the whole of our life from moment to moment, from hour to hour.
VI. The book of life. Jesus Christ is the Author of it. From beginning to end it is His. From the first page to the end, it is life all through: life as it first entered the soul; life as it grew and was fed and nourished and sustained, and the glorious results of life, the glorious harvest reaped by the soul; life which triumphs over our dead selves, which brings the dry bones together out of the gloomy sepulchre—the book of life, written by the Lord of life, Jesus Christ Himself.
W. Hay Aitken, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 881.
Rev 20:12
Standing before God.
I. What is meant by standing before God? We are apt to picture to ourselves a great dramatic scene, host beyond host, rank behind rank, the millions who have lived upon the earth, all standing crowded together in the indescribable presence of One who looks not merely at the mass, but at the individual, and sees through the whole life and character of every single soul. The picture is sublime, and it is what the words of St. John are intended to suggest. But we must get behind the picture to its meaning. The picture must describe not one scene only, but the whole nature and condition of the everlasting life. The souls of men in the eternal world are always "standing before God." And what does that mean? We understand at once if we consider that that before which a man stands is the standard, or test, or source of judgment for his life. Every soul that counts itself capable of judgment and responsibility stands in some presence by which the nature of its judgment is decreed. The higher the presence, the loftier and greater, though often the more oppressed and anxious, is the life. A weak man, who wants to shirk the seriousness and anxiety of life, goes down into some lower chamber and stands before some baser judge, whose standard will be less exacting. A strong, ambitious man presses up from judgment-room to judgment-room, and is not satisfied with meeting any standard perfectly so long as there is any higher standard which he has not faced.
II. The dead, small and great, St. John says that he saw standing before God. In that great judgment-day another truth is that the difference of sizes among human lives, of which we make so much, passes away, and all human beings, in simple virtue of their human quality, are called to face the everlasting righteousness. The child and the greybeard, the scholar and the boor, however their lives may have been separated here, they come together there. It is upon the moral ground that the most separated souls must always meet. All may be good: all may be bad; therefore before Him whose nature is the decisive touchstone of goodness and badness in every nature which is laid before it all souls of all the generations of mankind may be assembled. The only place where all can meet, and every soul claim its relationship with every other soul, is before the throne of God. The Father’s presence alone furnishes the meeting-place for all the children, regardless of differences of age or wisdom.
III. Another thought which is suggested by St. John’s verse is the easy comprehension of the finite by the infinite. All the dead of all the generations stand before God together. But there is no finite, however vast, that can overcrowd the infinite, none that the infinite cannot most easily grasp and hold. St. John says that he saw all the hosts of the dead stand before God. We, too, must see them stand before God, and they will not oppress us. Be sure that if you will begin, not by counting the multitude of the dead and asking yourself how any celestial meadow where you can picture them assembled can hold them all, but by lifting yourself up and laying hold on the infinity of God, you will find range enough in Him for all the marvellous conception of the immortality of all men. Every thought of man depends on what you first think of God.
Phillips Brooks, Twenty Sermons, p. 60.
Rev 20:12
The Secret Justice of Temporal Providence.
I. The great characteristic of future judgment is that it is open judgment: it declares itself. It does not leave the subject of punishment uncertain, so that a man does not know what he is punished for. All is open and plain dealing. We are told the reason of everything. We naturally connect a future judgment with a revelation of sin. It would seem to be a kind of Magna Charta of the next world that nothing shall be done without making known the grounds on which it is done. It is a transparent world; justice is a public justice, and proclaims its sentence upon the housetops. The whole congregation of God’s creatures is made a witness to it, confirms and ratifies the great work of Divine reward and punishment, and stamps the impress of conscience upon it.
II. But, with respect to the justice of this world as conducted under God’s providence, we must make very large deductions from this openness. Whatever may be said about the merit of it, and how much good it does, one thing is to be observed: it is not an open justice, like that in the courts of heaven; its characteristic is rather closeness. A great deal is done, and carefully done, by it in the world, and it may be said to achieve many most important ends here, and ends which the Divine government has in view, but it does not declare itself; it punishes largely, and says nothing. You cannot trace the links by which the disadvantages under which you suffer are connected with your faults; but the connection may be closer than you are aware. You complain that there is a falling short from what might have been expected. You struggle on, but there is an absence of advantages. The sun does not shine upon you. It is so, but how do you know to what extent you may yourself have cut off the sunshine?
III. We do not know what this or that particular penalty has been due to, this or that unkind, or ungracious, or selfish act, but we do know generally the kind of faults we are prone to and the risk we run through them. We know, or may know perfectly well if we please, that these evil habits or qualities tend to alienate good men from us. We must be always on our guard, and, so far as this world is governed upon moral principles and upon principles of justice, we must walk in caution and in fear.
IV. The invisible court of our fellow-creatures, which sits behind men’s backs, and issues negative punishments, is a true part of providential justice. The will of society upon its members is executed, and that will embodies much which is just and in the true interests of the community. But when we compare the inevitable meanness of the justice of the world and of society, its privacy, its cunning, its closeness, and those tendencies to a low type which are a part of the very system of things—when we compare these with the open court of heaven, the scene to which we turn rises before us as one full of majesty. Here we live amid the privacies and secret management of earthly justice; there we see the type and ideal of justice, for there God is Judge Himself.
J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional, p. 337.
Rev 20:12
The Last Assize.
Consider:—
I. He who is to decide our portion for eternity is the very Being who died as our Surety. Who but man can fully sympathise with man? And yet if an angel be not qualified to sit in judgment, how can a man be? A man may have the power of sympathy, which an angel has not; but then he is far inferior to the angels in those other properties which are required, and in some of those properties even angels are altogether deficient. So that, if we would determine who alone seems fitted to bear the office of judge of this creation, we appear to require the insupposable combination—insupposable, we mean, so long as you shut us out from the Gospel—the omniscience of the Deity and the feelings of humanity. We cannot dispense with the omniscience of Deity; we see clearly enough that no finite intelligence can be adequate to that decision which will ensure the thorough justice of future retribution. But then neither can we dispense with the feelings of humanity; at least, we can have no confidence in approaching His tribunal, if we are sure that the difference in nature incapacitates Him from sympathy with those whose sentence He is about to pronounce, and precludes the possibility of His so making our case His own, as to allow of His deciding with due allowance for our feebleness and temptations. And here revelation comes in, and sets before us a Judge in whose person is centred that amazing combination which we have just pronounced as insupposable. This Man, by whom God hath ordained that "He will judge the world in righteousness," is Himself Divine, "the Word which was in the beginning with God, and which was God," He shall come in human form, "and every eye shall see Him," "bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh"; and they who pierced Him shall look upon Him, and recognise through all His majesty the "Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." It is thus we are assured that mercy and justice will alike have full scope in the transactions of the judgment, and that in appointing that the Mediator who died as our Substitute will preside at our trial God hath equally provided that every decision shall be impartial, and yet every man be dealt with as brother to Him who must determine our fate. It is one of the most beautiful of the arrangements of redemption that the offices of Redeemer and Judge meet in the same Person, and that Person Divine. We call it a beautiful arrangement, as securing towards us tenderness as well as equity, the sympathy of a Friend as well as the disinterestedness of a righteous Arbiter. Had the Judge been only man, the imperfection of His nature would have led us to expect much of error in His verdicts; had He been only God, the distance between Him and ourselves would have made us fear that in determining our lots He would not have taken into account our feebleness and trials.
II. Note the thorough righteousness of the whole procedure of the judgment: "The dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." Though no man can be saved by his works, every man shall be judged according to his works. If he have believed on Christ (and this is the single appointed mode of salvation), the sincerity of his faith will be proved by his works; and therefore, in being awarded everlasting life, he will be "judged according to his works." If he have not relied on the merits of his Saviour, the want of faith will be evidenced by the deficiency of his works; and therefore will he also as to everlasting misery be judged according to his works. And over and above this general decision, "according to his works," we believe that every particular of conduct will have something corresponding to it in the final retribution. Indeed, the brief description that the judgment will be "in righteousness" comprehends all that can well be advanced on this topic—righteousness, so that nothing shall escape the Judge, and nothing impose on the Judge, and nothing embarrass the Judge. If found in Christ, there is no adversary that can accuse us, if not members of the Mediator, no power that can absolve.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2032.
Reference: Rev 20:12.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii., p. 97.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v4 Subdivision 7. (Rev 20:4-15.)
Subdivision 7. (Rev 20:4-15.)
The Consummation.
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1. And now we have what requires more knowledge of the Word to understand it rightly; but here also, more distinctly than before, there are visions and the interpretation of the vision, so that we will be inexcusable if we confound them. The vision is of thrones, and people sitting on them, judgment (that is, rule) being put into their hands. "The souls of those beheaded for the witness of Jesus and the word of God" are another company separate from these, but now associated with them; and "those who have not worshiped the beast" seem to be still another. All these live and reign with Christ a thousand years, and the rest of the dead do not live till the thousand years are ended. That is the vision. The interpretation follows; "this" we are told, "is the first resurrection;" and that "blessed and holy is he who hath part in the first resurrection: upon these the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years."
We must look carefully at all this, and in its order. First, the thrones, and those sitting on them: there should be no difficulty as to who these are, for we have already seen the elders crowned and seated in heaven, and before that have heard the Lord promise the overcomer in Laodicea that he should sit with Him upon His throne. That being now set up upon the earth, we find the saints throned with Him. In the interpretation it is said they reign with Him a thousand years. The vision is thus far very simple.
Daniel has already spoken of these thrones: "I beheld," he says, "till the thrones were placed" (as the R.V. rightly corrects the common one) "and the Ancient of Days did sit" (Dan 7:9). But there was then no word as to the occupants of the thrones. It is the part of Revelation to fill in the picture on its heavenly side, and to show us who these are. They are not angels, who, though there may be "principalities" among them, are never said to reign with Christ. They are redeemed men -the saints caught up at the descent of the Lord into the air (1Th 4:1-18), and who, as the armies that were in heaven, we have seen coming with the white-horsed King to the judgment of the earth.
This being so, it is evident that the "souls" next spoken of are a separate company from these, though joined to them as co-heirs of the kingdom. The folly that has been taught that they are "souls" simply, so that here we have a resurrection of souls and not of bodies, -together with that which insists that it is a resurrection of truths or principles, or of a martyr-"spirit," -bursts like a bubble when we take into account the first company of living and throned saints. In the sense intended, Scripture never speaks of a resurrection of souls. "Soul" is here used for "person," as we use it still, and as Scripture often uses it; and the word "resurrection" is found, not in the vision, where its signification might be doubtful, but in the explanation, where we have no right to take it as other than literal. What is the use of explanation, except to explain?
The recognition of the first company here also removes another difficulty which troubled those with whom the "blessed hope" revived at the end of the eighteenth century -that the first resurrection consisted wholly of martyrs. The second company does indeed consist of these, and for an evident reason. They are those who, converted after the Church is removed to heaven, would have their place naturally in earthly blessing with Israel and the saved nations. Slain for the Lord’s sake, during the tribulation following, they necessarily are deprived of this: only to find themselves, in the mercy of God, made to fill a higher place, and to be added, by divine power raising them from the dead, to the heavenly saints. How sweet and comforting this assurance as to the sufferers in a time of unequaled sorrow!
When we look further at this last company, we find, as already intimated, that it also consists of two parts: first, of those martyred in the time of the seals, and spoken of under the fifth seal; and secondly, the objects of the beast’s wrath, as in Rev 13:7; Rev 13:15. This particularization is a perfect proof of who are embraced in this vision, and that we must look to those first seen as sitting on the thrones for the whole multitude of the saints of the present and the past. To all of which it is added that "the rest of the dead lived not again till the thousand years were finished" -when we find, in fact, the resurrection of judgment taking place (vers. 11-15). All ought to be simple, then. The "first resurrection is a literal resurrection of all the dead in Christ from the foundation of the world; a certain group, which might seem not to belong to it, being specialized, as alone needing this. The first resurrection is "first" simply in contrast with that of the wicked, having different stages indeed, but only one character: "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection! upon such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years."
To suppose that this passage stands alone and unsupported in the New Testament is to be ignorant of much that is written. "Resurrection from the dead" as distinct from the general truth of "resurrection of the dead" is special New Testament truth. The Pharisees knew that there should be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust (Act 24:15); but when the Lord spoke of the Son of man rising from the dead, the disciples question among themselves what the rising from the dead could mean (Mar 9:9-10). Christ’s own resurrection is the pattern of the believer’s. The "order" of the resurrection is distinctly given us: "Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming" (1Co 15:23): not a general, but a selective resurrection. Such was what the apostle would by any means gain: not, as in the common version, "the resurrection of" but the resurrection from the dead (Php 3:11).
In his epistle to the Thessalonians the same apostle instructs us more distinctly as to it, speaking in the way of special revelation by "the word of the Lord: "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent" -or, as the R.V., "precede" -"them that are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (1Th 4:15-17). Thus, before He appears shall His saints be with Him; and of course, long before the resurrection of the lost.
But the Lord Himself has given us, in His answer to the Sadducees, what most clearly unites with this vision in Revelation (Luk 20:34-36). They had asked Him, of one who had married seven brethren, "whose wife shall she be in the resurrection?" meaning, of course, to discredit it by the suggestion. "And Jesus said unto them, The children of this world marry and are given in marriage; but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection."
Clearly this asserts the fact, and gives the character of the special resurrection which the vision here describes. It is one which we must be "accounted worthy" to obtain, not one which nobody can miss; it is grace that acts in giving any one his place in it. Those who have part in it are by that fact proclaimed to be "the children of God;" thus again showing that it cannot be a general one. They die no more; that is (as here), they are not hurt of the second. death. They are equal to the angels: above the fleshly conditions of this present life. Finally, it is the resurrection from the dead, not of the dead merely. All this is so plain that there should be no possibility of mistaking it, one would say; and yet it is no plainer than this scene in Revelation.
How dangerous must be the spell of a false system, which can so blind the eyes of multitudes of truly godly and otherwise intelligent persons to the plain meaning of such scriptures as these: and how careful should we be to test everything we receive by the Word, which alone is truth! Even the "wise" virgins slumbered with the rest; which shows us also, however, that error is connected with a spiritual condition, even in saints themselves. May we be kept from all that would thus cloud our perception of what, as truth, alone has power to bless and sanctify the soul!
2. Of the millennial earth, not even the slightest sketch is given us here. The book of Revelation is the closing book of prophecy, with the rest of which we are supposed to be familiar; and it is the Christian book, which supplements it with the addition of what is heavenly. Thus the reign of the heavenly saints has just been shown us: for details as to the earth, we must go to the Old Testament.
In the Millennium, the heavenly is displayed in connection with the earthly. The glory of God is manifested, so that the earth is filled with the knowledge of it as the waters cover the sea. Righteousness rules, and evil is afraid to lift its head. The curse is taken from the ground, which responds with wondrous fruitfulness. Amid all this, the spiritual condition is by no means in correspondence with the outward blessing. Even the manifest connection of righteousness and prosperity cannot avail to make men love righteousness; nor the goodness of God, though evidenced on every side, to bring men to repentance. At the "four corners of the earth," retreating as far as possible from the central glory, there are still those who represent Israel’s old antagonists, and thus are called by their names "Gog and Magog." Nor are they remnants, but masses of population, brought together by sympathetic hatred of God and His people -crowding alike out of light into the darkness: a last and terrible answer to the question, "Lord, what is man?"
The "Gog, of the land of Magog," whose invasion of Israel is prophetically described in the book of Ezekiel (38, 39), is the prototype of these last invaders. There need be no confusion, however, between them; for the invasion in Ezekiel is premillennial, not postmillennial, as that in Revelation is. It is then that Israel are just back in their land (Eze 38:14), and from that time God’s name is known in Israel, and they pollute His holy name no more (Eze 39:7). The nations too learn to know Him (Eze 38:16; Eze 38:23). There needs, therefore, no further inquiry to be sure that this is not after a thousand years of such knowledge.
But Gog and Magog here follow in the track of men who have long before made God known in the judgment He executed -follow them in awful, reckless disregard of the end before them. This is clearly due to the loosing once more of Satan. While he was restrained, the evil was there, but cowed and hidden. He gives it energy and daring. They go up now on the breadth of the earth -from which for the moment the divine shield seems to be removed, and compass the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city. The last is of course the earthly Jerusalem. The "camp of the saints" seems to be that of the heavenly saints, who are the Lord’s host around it. The city is of course impregnable: the rebels are taken in the plain fact of hostility to God and His people; and the judgment is swift and complete: "fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them." The wicked are extinct out of the earth.
The arch-rebel now receives final judgment. "And the devil that deceived them was cast into a lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are; and they shall be tormented day and night for the ages of ages."
These words deserve most solemn consideration. They are plain enough indeed; but what is there from which man will not seek to escape when his will is adverse? The deniers of eternal punishment, both on the side of restitution and that of annihilation, are here confronted with a plain example of it. Two human beings cast in alive into the lake of fire a thousand years before are found there, at the close of this long period still in existence! How evident that this fire is not, therefore, like material fire, but something widely different! All the arguments as to the action of fire in consuming what is exposed to it are here at once shown to be vain. That which can remain a thousand years in the lake of fire unconsumed may remain, so far as one can see, forever; and it is forever that they here are plainly said to be tormented.
But it is objected that there is, in fact, no verb here: the sentence reads simply, "where the beast and the false prophet," and that to fill up the gap properly we must put "were cast," which would say nothing about continuance. But what, then, about the concluding statement, "and they" -for it is a plural -"and they shall be tormented day and night for the ages of ages"?
Finding this argument vain, or from the opposite interest of restitution, it is urged that "day and night" do not exist in eternity. But we are certainly brought here to eternity, and "for the ages of ages" means nothing else. It is the measure of the life of God Himself (Rev 4:10). No passage that occurs, even to the smoke of Babylon ascending up, can be shown to have a less significance.
Growing desperate, some have ventured to say that we should translate "till the ages of ages." But the other passages stand against this with an iron front, and forbid it. We are, in this little season, right on the verge of eternity itself. The same expression is used as to the judgment of the great white throne, which is in eternity. It will not do to say of God that He lives to the ages of ages, and not through them. The truth is very plain, then, that the punishment here decreed to three transgressors is, in the strictest sense, eternal.
Whether the same thing is true of all the wicked dead, we now go on to see.
The Millennium is over: "And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled, and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things that were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hades delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every one according to their works. And death and hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And whoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."
This is the judgment of the dead alone, and must be kept perfectly distinct in our minds from the long previous judgment of the living. The judgment in Mat 25:1-46, for example, where the "sheep" are separated from the "goats," is a judgment of the living -of the nations upon earth when the Lord comes. It is not, indeed, the warrior-judgment of those taken with arms in their hands, in open rebellion, which we have beheld in the premillennial vision. The nations are gathered before the Son of man, who has just come in His glory and all the holy angels with Him; and that coming, as when elsewhere spoken of throughout the prophecy, is unquestionably premillennial. As mankind are divided into three classes, "the Jew, the Gentile, and the Church of God," so the prophecy in relation to the Jew is to be found in Mat 24:1-42; that in relation to the professing church, to the 30th verse of the next chapter; and the rest of it gives us the sessional judgment of the Gentiles, so far as they have been reached by the everlasting gospel. The judgment is not of all the deeds done in the body: it is as to how they have treated the brethren of the Lord (ver. 40) who have been among them, evidently as travelers, in rejection and peril. The Jewish point of view of prophecy as a whole clearly points to Jewish messengers who as such represent Israel’s King (comp. Mat 10:40). There is not a word about resurrection of the dead, which the time of this judgment excludes the possibility of, as to the wicked. It is one partial as to its range, limited to that of which it takes account, and in every way distinct from such a general judgment as the large part of Christendom even yet looks for.
Here in the vision before us there is simply the judgment of the dead; and although the word is not used, the account plainly speaks of resurrection. The sea gives up the dead which are in it, as well as, by implication, also the dry land. Death, as well as hades, deliver up what they respectively hold; and as hades is unequivocally the receptacle of the soul (Act 2:27), so must "death," on the other hand, which the soul survives (Mat 10:28), stand here in connection with that over which it has supreme control -the body.
The dead, then, here rise; and we have that from which the "blessed and holy" of the first resurrection are delivered -the "resurrection of judgment" (Joh 5:29, R.V.). From personal judgment the Lord expressly assures us that the believer is exempt (Joh 5:24, R.V.). Here, not only are the works judged, which will be true of the believer also, and for lasting blessing to him, but men are judged according to their works -a very different thing. Such a judgment will allow of no hope for the most upright and godly among mere men.
And this would seem to show that, though a millennium has passed since the first resurrection, yet no righteous dead can stand among this throng. The suggestion of the "book of life" has seemed to many to imply that there are such; but it is not said that there are, and the words "whoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire" may be simply a solemn declaration (now affirmed by the result) that grace is man’s only possible escape from the judgment. May it not even be intended to apply more widely than to the dead here, and take in the living saints of the Millennium negatively, as showing how, in fact, they are not found before this judgment-seat?
At any rate, the principle of judgment -"according to their works" -seems to exclude absolutely any of those saved by grace. And there are intimations also, in the Old Testament prophecies, as to the extension of life in the Millennium, which seem well to consist with the complete arrest of death for the righteous during the whole period. If "as the days of a tree shall be the days of God’s people" (Isa 65:22), and he who dies at a hundred years dies as a child yet, and for wickedness -because there shall be no more any one, apart from this, that shall not fill his days (ver. 20) -it would almost seem to follow that there is no death. And to this the announcement as to the "sheep" in the judgment-scene in Matthew, that "the righteous shall go away into life eternal," strikingly corresponds. For to go into life eternal is not to possess life in the way that we at present may; in fact, as "righteous" they already did this: it means apparently nothing less than the complete canceling of the claim of death in their case.
And now death and hades are cast into the lake of fire -that is, those who dwelt in them are cast there. These exist, as it were, but in those who fill them; and thus we learn that there is no exemption or escape from the last final doom for any who come into this judgment. The lake of fire is the second death. The first terminated in judgment man’s career on earth; the second closes the intermediate state in their judged alienation from the Source of life. The first is but the type of the second. As we have seen, it is not extinction at all; and indeed a resurrection merely for the sake of suffering before another extinction would seem self-contradictory. In fact, death -what we ordinarily call that -is now destroyed. "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment," which is thenceforth, therefore, undying (Heb 9:27).
With the great white throne set up, the earth and the heavens pass away, and there come into being "a new heaven and a new earth, in which dwelleth righteousness" (2Pe 3:13).
3. Before the face of Him who sits upon the great white throne "the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them" (Rev 20:11). We have now a complementary statement: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth." It is clear, therefore, that an earthly condition abides for eternity. It is a point of interest as to which Scripture seems to give full satisfaction, whether this new earth is itself a "new creation," or the old earth remodeled and made new. At first sight, one would no doubt decide for the former; and this was the view that at one time almost held possession of the field, the new earth scarcely being regarded by the mass as "earth" at all. Practically, the earth was simply believed to exist no more; and in contrast with it, all was to be heavenly: the double sphere of blessing; earth and heaven, was lost sight of, if not denied.
Lately, for many, reaction has set in, and the pendulum has swung past the point of rest to the other extreme. The prophecies of the Old Testament rightly understood as to be literally taken, and delivered from the glosses of a falsely called "spiritual" interpretation, seem to agree with the apostle Peter and the book of Revelation in making the earth to be the inheritance of the saints -the earth in a heavenly condition, brought back out of its state of exile, and into true relation with the rest of the family of heaven, not alienated from their original place. Contrast between earth and heaven as an eternal existence was again, but from the other side of it, denied.
The whole web and woof of Scripture is against either of these confusions: the point of rest can only be in accepting the distinction of earthly from heavenly as fundamental to all right understanding of the prophetic Word. The Old Testament "promises" which have in view the earth as a sphere of blessing, are, as the apostle declares (Rom 9:1-4), Jewish, not Christian. The New Testament emphasizes that the blessings of the Christian are in "heavenly places" (Eph 1:3); nor can this last possibly apply to the earth made heavenly. The Lord has left us with the assurance (Joh 14:1-31) that in His Father’s house are many mansions, -permanent places of abode, -that He was going to prepare a place there for us, and that He will come again to receive us to Himself, that where He is, there we may be also. As well assure us that the Lord’s permanent abode is to be on earth, and not in heaven, as that our own is to be here, not there.
Each line of truth must have its place if we are to be "rightly dividing the word of truth." The heavenly "bride of the Lamb" is not the earthly; "Jerusalem which is above" is not the Palestinian city; the "Church of first-born ones who are written in heaven" are not that "Israel" declared God’s "firstborn" as to the earth; the promise of the "Morning Star" is not the same as that of the "Sun of Righteousness," although Christ is assuredly both of these. Discernment of such differences is a necessity for all true filling of our place, and practical rendering of Christian life.
Let us look now, however, at the question of continuity between the earth that flees away and the earth that succeeds it. At first sight we should surely say they cannot be identical. The well-known passage in the epistle of Peter would seem to confirm this (2Pe 3:10; 2Pe 3:12). There we learn that "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned. up." And it is repeated, and thus emphasized by repetition, that "the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat."
Yet, as we look more closely, we shall find reason to doubt whether more is meant than the destruction of the earth as the place of human habitation. In the Deluge, to which it is compared (vers. 5-7), "the world that then was perished;" yet its continuity with the present no one doubts. Fire, though the instrument of a more penetrating judgment, yet does not annihilate the material upon which it fastens. The melting even of elements implies rather the reverse, and dissolution is not (in this sense) destruction.
Yet the heavens and the earth pass away -that is, in the form in which now we know them; or, as the apostle speaks to the Corinthians, "the fashion of this world passes away" (1Co 7:31); and that this is the sense in which we are to understand it, other scriptures come to assure us.
A new earth does not necessarily mean another earth, except as a "new" man means another man -"new" in the sense of renewed. And even the words here, "there was no more sea," naturally suggest another state of the earth than now exists. This fact is a significant one: that which is the type of instability and barrenness, and condemns to it so large a portion of the globe, is gone utterly and forever. At the beginning of Genesis we find the whole earth buried under it; emerging on the third day, and the waters given their bounds, which but once afterward they pass. Now they are gone forever, as are the wicked, to whom Isaiah compares it: "The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt." This last is the effect of chafing against its bounds, as "the mind of the flesh" is "not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom 8:7).
These analogies cannot fail to illustrate another which the Lord Himself gives us, when He speaks of the millennial kingdom as the "regeneration" -ye who have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Mat 19:28). Here let us note that it is the Lord’s kingdom that is the regeneration of the earth. That reign of righteousness which is the effectual curb upon human wickedness, not the removal of it, answers thus to what "regeneration" is for him who is in this sense in the Lord’s kingdom now. Sin is not removed; the flesh abides even in the regenerate; but it has its bound -it does not reign, has not dominion. In the perfect state, whether for the individual or the earth, righteousness dwells, as Peter says of the latter: sin exists no more. How striking does the analogy here become when we remember that the change, perhaps dissolution, of the body comes between the regenerate and the perfect state, just as the similar "dissolution" of the earth does between the Millennium and the new earth! Surely this throws a bright light upon the point we are examining.
The new heavens are, of course, only the earth-heavens the work of the second of the six days. They are of great importance to the earth which they surround and to which they minister. More and more is science coming to recognize how (in natural law at least) "the heavens rule." Yet, who but an inspired writer, of the time of Peter or John, would have made so much of the new heavens? And these only, as Peter reminds us, develop a much earlier "promise." This we find in Isa 65:1-25; Isa 66:1-24, a repeated announcement, the second time explicitly connected with the continuance of Israel’s "seed" and "name": "For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall abide before Me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain." Thus, even in the new earth there will be no merging of Israel in the general mass of the nations. The first-born people written on earth will show still how "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance" as will the "Church of the first-born who are written in heaven." These different circles of blessing, like the principalities and powers in heavenly places, are quite accordant with what we see everywhere of God’s manifold ways and ranks in creation. Why should eternity efface these differences, which of course do not touch the unity of the family of God as such, while they are abiding witnesses of divine mercy in relation to a past of which the lessons are never to be lost?
Earth, then, itself remains, but a "new" earth; and, as the seal upon its eternal blessedness, "I saw," says the prophet-evangelist, "the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of the throne, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall tabernacle with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, their God." Here is the promise in Immanuel’s name made finally good to the redeemed race: and he who is privileged to show us the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father, tabernacling among men when the Word was made flesh, is the one who shows us the full consummation. Of the new Jerusalem we have presently a detailed account; here, what is emphasized is, that it is the link between God and men; God Himself is with men, in all the fulness of blessing implied in that.
We must not, however, pass over anything: the less even that is said, the more should we ponder that which is said. Let us see, then, what is here, putting it in connection with what seems most naturally to throw light upon it elsewhere. Standing where we are, -at the end of time, -we stand, indeed, whither the whole stream of time has been conducting us, and therefore with the countless voices of the past sounding prophetically to us. What will it be to be actually there, at the end of the ways which, though through the valley of Baca, lead up to the city of God!
First, here, we are shown that He has prepared for us a city -"the holy city." The new Jerusalem is surely, what its earthly type is, a "city of habitation:" it is not simply a figure for the saints themselves. The patriarchs of old, content to await in patient faith the end of their pilgrim-journey, "looked for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God;" and He will not disappoint their expectations -"He hath prepared for them a city" (Heb 11:10; Heb 11:16). At the very beginning of the world’s history we find in one who manifested a totally opposite spirit, still the desire of the human heart which this promise meets. Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, fugitive and vagabond as he was, to build a city. Without faith or patience, he only shows the natural craving of the heart, but not in itself evil because natural. Ever since, the history of man has connected itself mainly with its cities. From Babel on to Rome, these have been the centres of power and progress ever, and (the world being what it is) they have exhibited in the most developed way its opposition to God. But God too has His city, and makes much of it, "beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth," and with it associates (Psa 87:1-7) the one great Name which eclipses that of all others.
The tendency of the day is toward cities, and in these, for good or for ill, we find the greatest development of man; only, man being fallen, the development is monstrous. When the day of the Lord has put down, however, all human thoughts, it is only to exalt Jerusalem upon the earth, and to make way for the display of that better Jerusalem that is here before us.
The city is the expression of human need, and the provision for it. In the midst of strife and insecurity, men gather together for protection; but that is only a small part of what is implied in it. There are other needs more universal than this, as that of co-operation, the division of labor, the result of that inequality of aptitudes by which God has made us mutually dependent. Our social nature is thus met, and there are formed and strengthened the ties by which the world is bound together; while the intercourse of mind with mind, of heart with heart, stimulates and develops every latent faculty. "Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend" (Pro 27:17).
The eternal city implies for us association, fellowship, intercourse, the fulness of what was intimated in the primal saying, "It is not good for man to be alone," but which in respect of the bride-city, which this is, has still a deeper meaning. Here, the relationship of the saint to Christ, who as the Lamp of divine glory enlightens it, alone adequately explains all. "Alone" we can nevermore be. "With Him" our whole manhood shall find its complete answer, satisfaction, and rest.
This is necessarily, therefore, the "holy city." Cain’s has but too much characterized every city hitherto. Where shall we find, as in the city, the reek of impurity and the hotbed of corruption? There poverty and riches pour out a common flood of iniquity, out of which comes, ever increasing, the defiant cry of despair. But here at last is a "HOLY CITY," the new Jerusalem, "foundation of peace:" not, like Babel of old, towering up to heaven, but coming down from heaven, the way of all good, of all blessing for men. The tabernacle of God is with men. God Himself tabernacles with them.* His own hand removes every trace of former sorrow, every effect of sin. His own voice proclaims what His hand accomplishes: "Behold, I make all things new." Here, that we may be fully assured, a confirmatory word is added.
{*Is there not in this word "tabernacle" the suggestion that any habitation of God with men must be in pure grace? He is infinitely sufficient unto Himself, and it is only in love that He dwells with men. On the other hand, this does not imply that there is anything temporary in the abiding. It is surely eternal, as Christ is eternally Man. -S.R.}
4. And along with this, and in view of it, in the name of Him who is Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, the sweet invitation of the gospel is once more published, the free gift of the water of life to every thirsty soul is certified, and the inheritance to the overcomer, for it is reached by the way of conflict and of triumph -grace securing, not evading, this: "He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God; and he shall be My son."
Just here, too, with no less earnestness, and in eternity, past all the change of time, the doom of the wicked is pronounced: "But the fearful," -too cowardly to take part with Christ in a world opposed to Him, -"and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."
5. The last vision of Revelation is now before us: it is that of the city of God itself. But here, where one would desire above all to see clearly, we become most conscious of how feeble and dull is our apprehension of eternal things. They are words of an apostle which remind us that "we see through a glass darkly" -en ainigmati, in a riddle. Such a riddle, then, it is no wonder if the vision presents to us: the dream that we have here a literal description, even to the measurements, of the saints’ eternal home, is one too foolish to need much comment. All other visions throughout the book have been symbolic: how much more here! how little need we expect that the glimpse which is here given us into the unseen would reveal to us the shape of buildings, or the material used! Scripture is reticent all through upon such subjects, and the impress to be left upon our souls is plainly spiritual, not of lines and hues, as for the natural senses. "Things which eye hath not seen" are not put before the eye.
On the other hand, that the "city" revealed to us here is not simply a figure of the saints themselves, as, from the term used for it, "the Bride, the Lamb’s wife," some have taken it to be, there are other scriptures which seem definitely to assure us. "Jerusalem, which is above, which is our mother" (Gal 4:1-31), could hardly be used in this way, though the Church is indeed so conceived of in patristic and medieval thought. But even thus it would not be spoken of naturally as "above."
In Heb 12:1-29 we have a still more definite testimony. For there the "Church of the first-born ones which are written in heaven," as well as "the spirits of just men made perfect," -in other words, both Christians and the saints of the Old Testament, -are mentioned as distinct from "the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem;" and this will not allow them to be the same thing; although, in another way, the identification of a city with its inhabitants is easy.
We are led in the same direction by the mention of the "tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God," -the place to which the apostle thought he might have been caught, even bodily (2Co 12:1-21), -and here is the tree of life in the midst of the city, beside the "river of water of life" which flows from the throne of God! Figurative language all this surely; yet these passages combine to give us the thought of the heavenly abode, already existing, and which will be in due time revealed as the metropolis of the heavenly kingdom -what Jerusalem restored will be in the lower sphere. Indeed, the earthly here so parallels and illustrates the heavenly as to be a most useful help in fixing, if not enlarging, our thoughts about it -always while we realize, of course, the essential difference that Scripture itself makes clear to be between them. But this we shall have to look at as we proceed.
"The holy city, Jerusalem," is certainly intended to be a plain comparison with the earthly city. But that is the type only; this is the antitype, the true "foundation of peace," as the word means. What more comforting title, after all the scenes of strife, the fruit of the lusts that war in our members, which we have had to look upon! Here is "peace" at last, and on a foundation that shall not be removed, but that stands fast forever. For this is emphatically "the city that hath foundations," and "whose builder and maker is God" (Heb 11:10). How blessed it is, too, that it should be just one of the seven angels that had the seven last plagues that shows John the city! for no mere executioner of judgment we see is he: judgment (as with God, for it is God’s) is also his "strange work." It had to come, and it has come: there was no help, no hope without it; thus the stroke of the "rod of iron" was that of the shepherd’s rod: it was the destruction of the destroyers only. But it is past, and here is the scene wherein his own heart rests, to which it returns with loyalty and devotion: here, where the water of life flows from the throne of God, -eternal, from the Eternal, -refreshment, gladness, fruitfulness and power are found in obedience.
But the city is the "Bride, the Lamb’s wife." In the Old Testament, the figure of marriage is used in a similar way. Israel was thus Jehovah’s "married wife" (Isa 54:1; Jer 31:32), now divorced indeed for her unfaithfulness, but yet to return (Hos 2:1-23), and be received and reinstated. Her Maker will then be once more her husband, and more than the old blessing be restored. In the forty-fifth psalm, Israel’s King, Messiah, is the Bridegroom; the Song of Solomon is the mystic song of His espousals. Jerusalem thus bears His name: "This is the name whereby she shall be called: Jehovah our Righteousness" (Jer 33:16, comp. Jer 23:6). The land, too, shall be "married" (Isa 62:4).
In the New Testament, the same figure is still used in the same way. The Baptist speaks of his joy, as the "friend of the Bridegroom," in hearing the Bridegroom’s voice (Joh 3:29); and in the parable of the virgins (Mat 25:1-46), where Christians are those who go forth to meet the Bridegroom, they are, by that very fact, not regarded as the Bride, which is still Israel (according to the general character of the prophecy), though not actually brought into the scene. Some may be able to see, also, in the marriage at Cana of Galilee (Joh 2:1) the veiling of the same thought.
All this, therefore, is in that earthly sphere in which Israel’s blessings lie; our own are "in heavenly places" (Eph 1:3), and here it is we find, not the Bride of Messiah simply, but distinctively "the Bride of the Lamb." The "Lamb," as a title, always keeps before us His death, and that by violence, "a Lamb as it had been slain" (Rev 5:6); and it is thus that He has title to that redemption empire in which we find Him throughout this book. But "the Bride of the Lamb" is thus one espoused to Him in His rejection, sharer (though it be but in slight measure) of His reproach and sorrow, trained and disciplined for glory in a place of humiliation. And so it is said that "if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him;" and again, "If so be we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together" (2Ti 2:12; Rom 8:17).
The saints in the Millennium have no heritage of suffering such as this; even those who pass through the trial which ushers it in have not the same character of it, although we must not forget those associated with the Lamb upon mount Zion, who illustrate the same truth, but upon a lower platform. Even these are not His Bride.
Ephesians, the epistle of the heavenly places, shows us the Church as Eve of the last Adam, whom Christ loves, and for whom He gave Himself. Formed out of Himself and for Himself, He now sanctifies and cleanses her with water-washing by the Word, that He may present her to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. In another aspect, this Church is His body, formed by the baptism of the Spirit as at Pentecost, complete when those who are Christ’s are caught up to meet Him in the air. The doctrine of this is, of course, not in Revelation; the difficulty is in seeing the conformity of Revelation with it.
Outside of Revelation even, there is a difficulty in the connection (if there be, as one would anticipate, a connection) between the Church as the body of Christ now, before our presentation to Him, and the "one flesh" which is the fruit of marriage. Israel was the married wife, and will be, though now for a time "desolate," as one divorced. The Church is "espoused" (2Co 11:2), not married. Thus the "one body" and the "great mystery" of "one flesh," of which the apostle speaks (Eph 5:29), must be distinct.
Looking back to Adam, to whom as a type he there refers us, we find that Eve is taken out of his side -is thus really his "flesh" by her very making. Thus, as one with him in nature, she is united to him -a union in which the prior unity finds its fit expression. The two things are therefore in this way very clearly and intimately connected. The being of Christ’s body is that, then, which alone prepares and qualifies for the being of His Bride hereafter; and body and Bride must be strictly commensurate with each other.
The mystery here is great, as the apostle himself says; nor is it to be affirmed that the type in all its features answers to the reality. It is easily seen that this could not be; yet there is real correspondence and suitability thus far: according to it, the Church of Christ alone, from Pentecost to the rapture, is scripturally (in a strict sense) the "Bride of the Lamb."
Yet can we confine the new Jerusalem to these? There would, of course, in this case be no difficulty as to the character of a city which it is given in this vision. A city is commonly enough identified with its inhabitants, so that the same term covers both place and persons. But are none to inhabit the new Jerusalem except the saints of Christian times? Are none of these so illustrious in the Old Testament to find their place there? Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are among those with whom the Lord assures us we are to sit down in the kingdom of God (Luk 13:28-29); -are they to be outside the heavenly city?
This is positively answered otherwise, as it would seem, in Revelation itself. For while the general account of those who enter there is that they are those "written in the Lamb’s book of life" (Rev 21:27), "without" the city are said to be only "dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie" (Rev 22:15).
In the eleventh of Hebrews, moreover, in a verse already quoted, "the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God," for which the patriarchs looked and waited, can surely be no other than that which we find here; and it is added that they desired" a better country -that is, a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He hath prepared for them a city." It could not be the New Testament Church for which Abraham looked; for this was as yet entirely hidden in God (Eph 3:9). Another and larger meaning for the new Jerusalem must surely, therefore, be admitted.
And why should there not be in it an inclusion of both thoughts? Why should it not be the Bride-city, named from the Bride-Church, whose home it is, and yet containing other occupants? This alone would seem to cover the whole of the facts which Scripture gives us as to it; and the Jewish Bride is in like manner sometimes a wider, sometimes a narrower conception; sometimes the city Jerusalem, sometimes the people Israel. Only that in the Old Testament the city is the narrower, the people the wider view; while in the New Testament this is reversed. And even this may be significant: the heavenly city, the dwelling-place of God, permitting none of the redeemed to be outside it, but opening its gates widely to all. A Bride-city indeed, ever holding bridal festival, and having perpetual welcome for all that come: its freshness never fading, its joy never satiating; blessed are they whose names are written there!
As before, the city is seen "descending out of heaven from God." We shall find, however, here, that the present vision goes back of the new heavens and earth to the millennial age -that is, that while itself eternal, the city is seen in connection with the earth at this time. Not yet has it been said, "The tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them." The descending city is not, therefore, in that settled and near intimacy with men outside of it in which it will be. A significant and perfect note of time it is that the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of nations (Rev 22:2). Tender as this grace is, the condition it shows could not be eternal.
All the nearer does it bring this vision of glory and of love, no more to be banished or dimmed by human sin or sorrow. The city has the glory of God; and here is the goal of hope, complete fruition of that which but as hope outshines all that is known of brightness elsewhere. It cannot be painted with words. We cannot hope even to expand what the Holy Ghost has given us. But the blessedness itself we are soon to know.
The holy city descends from heaven, "having the glory of God." She is the chosen vessel of it, to display it to the universe, being the fruit of Christ’s work, the fullest witness of abounding grace. Her shining is "like a most precious stone, as a crystal-like jasper-stone," or diamond, as we have already taken it to be.* The carbon crystallized into this lustrous brilliant, which still shines with a light not its own, is a fit representation of the "glory" that is to be "in the Church in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages" (Eph 1:21). This glory which God manifests through His creatures, He manifests to His creatures, satisfying His own love in bringing them thus nigh unto Himself. How blessed to be a means of such display!
{*See on Rev 4:3.}
The wall of the city clearly speaks of its security: it has "a great and high wall;" for "salvation hath God appointed as walls and bulwarks" (Isa 26:1). And in the wall, which has 4 sides, there are 12 gates, 3 gates on every side, for egress and ingress -home, as this is, of a life which is unceasing activity. The number 12 is upon all the city, 12 being an expanded 7, with the same factors (4X3 instead of 4+3), and the symbol of manifest divine government, God being here manifestly supreme. This is perfection in its deepest analysis; and the numbers are thus one in fact. The 12 here is the usual 4X3; the 3 still speaking of divine manifestation, while the 4 shows it to be universal, the sides facing also every way.
At the gates are 12 angels; upon them the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. As the tabernacle of God, a reference to the tabernacle of old is surely in place here, though to that there was but one entrance, for a simple and beautiful reason, Christ being seen in it as the only way of approach to God. Now there are 12 gates, answering to the 12 tribes, which in the wilderness also were grouped in similar 3s around the tabernacle. Ezekiel, in his last vision of the future (Eze 48:1-35), shows us what more exactly answers to what is here, though speaking of the earthly city restored, and not the heavenly; and there the gates are appropriated, one to each particular tribe. Israel are here, as it would seem, their own representatives, as in the vision of the seventh chapter; and we are reminded of their being in nearest connection upon earth with the heavenly city. In the heavenly sphere, at the gates are angels. The heavenly and earthly relations of the city are thus declared.
There are 12 foundations of the wall of the city also; but on these are the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. They have laid the foundations, and their names are stamped upon their work. We are surely not to imagine any individualizing here, as if any one foundation could be appropriated to any one apostle, or indeed that the number 12 itself is anything but characteristic. This connects itself also with the question of the presence or absence of Paul’s name from the number. It is remarkable that almost the same difficulty connects with the 12 tribes of Israel, which often exclude and often include the tribe of Levi. Taking Ephraim and Manasseh, the two sons of Joseph, as tribal heads, equal in this respect to Jacob’s other sons, (and this is the place that they are given in the history,) yet they are none the less always counted 12. Why may not the apostles, in spite of the addition of Paul to their number, be counted here as 12?*
{*As Paul; too, was distinctively the apostle of the Church, through whom its unity as the body of Christ and its heavenly destiny as the Bride of Christ were revealed, we may well associate him with the city as a whole, rather than one of its foundations. -S.R.}
The measurements of the city and the wall are next given. The city is a cube, 12,000 furlongs every way; the wall, 144 cubits high. The number 12 still governs everywhere. The cube speaks of substance, reality. The sanctuary in the tabernacle and in the temple were both cubes. This is the eternal sanctuary, and the full fruition of every hope of the saint.
The building of the wall is of jasper (or diamond). The divine glory is itself a safeguard of the eternal city. What can touch that which God has ordained for His own praise? The city itself is pure transparent gold, -pure, permanent, radiant, -not hindering, but welcoming the enraptured sight. The foundations of the wall are adorned with every precious stone -all the attributes of God displayed in that upon which rests the salvation of the people of God. The stones, in their separate meanings, are again a mystery. The 12 gates are 12 pearls -the picture of such grace as has been shown in the Church (Mat 13:45-46). These gates stand open all the unending day. The street of the city is, again, "pure gold, like transparent glass." The street, especially in the East, is the place of traffic, the meeting-place constantly of need and greed. But here, all circumstances, all intercourse, the whole environment, is absolute holiness and truth, fit for and permeated by the felt presence of God.
And this leads us directly to the next statement, that because the city is all sanctuary, there is no more any special one. The presence of God is the temple of the city: there is no other; and the Lamb is He who characterizes for us, and will always characterize, this otherwise ineffable Presence. There is no distance; there is nothing that can produce distance; there never can be more. It is that which the presence of Jesus among us -now nearly nineteen centuries since -implied and pledged to us: it is Immanu-El -"God with us" -in full reality, and in the highest and most intimate way.
It is true we have not the Father spoken of as such: it is "the Lord (or Jehovah) God Almighty," -the God of Old-Testament revelation, -with "the Lamb," in whom we have the revelation of the New. Nothing less, surely, is meant than God in full display, so far as the creature can ever be made to apprehend Him. There is a glory of the Light always inaccessible -not hid in darkness, but in light which no human eye can ever penetrate. None can fully know God but God. This is only to say that the creature remains the creature; but the limitation of faculties does not mean distance, as if kept back. "The Lamb" shows, on the one hand, the desire of God to be known, while implying, in the very fact of manhood taken for this revelation, that God purely as God could not be known.
Thus, it is immediately added that the glory of God lightens the city, and "the Lamb is the lamp thereof." The lamp sustains the light. It adds nothing to it, for to divine glory nothing can be added: if anything could be, it would no longer be divine. But the light is "put upon a candlestick (or lamp) that they who enter in may see the light" (Luk 8:16). So will Christ always be the One in whom the Father is made known: nay, the sacrificial word ("Lamb") assures us that we shall always have need of the past also for this. But this does not at all mean that there will not be what the Lord has assured us the angels of the little children enjoy continually: "Their angels do always behold the face of My Father who is in heaven."
It is time now to inquire whether the measurements of the heavenly city cannot receive further developments. As already said, there is no temple in the New Jerusalem, and the reason is that it is all temple. "The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it." Over the earthly Jerusalem, in its millennial condition, the cloud of glory broods (Isa 4:5), and the city itself receives the name of Jehovah Shammah, that is, "Jehovah is there." Still the temple and the city, as we see by Ezekiel, are separate things. Here, on the other hand, they are brought together. The city is the temple, through the presence of God in it which constitutes it this. It is natural, therefore, to look at the earthly temple to see if there be not some connection between it and this heavenly one. Now, in each case we have careful measurements, in testimony that every detail is of divine appointment. And when we come to look at this measurement, we shall find some relationship between the two, which must certainly be intended for our instruction. In Revelation, the measurement is by "a golden reed," in the hands of an angel, who is also spoken of as a man; and this twofold designation of him, manifestly applies in some way to the measurement itself. "He measured the wall," we are told," 144 cubits, the measure of a man, that is of the angel." Thus it is human measure, and yet surpassing this; and when we turn to Ezekiel, we shall find what seems to explain this in a remarkable way. The one who measures is, in Ezekiel, spoken of all through as a "man;" but the measure shows a difference from mere human measurement, which is noted for us. It is human measure, for the cubit is used, which is such, but the cubit is more than the human one. Each cubit in it is "a cubit and an hand-breadth," not the ordinary one. This has perplexed the commentators, who explain it in various and contradictory ways. The rationalistic one is that Ezekiel simply adopted the cubit of the country in which his people were now captives, -it is a Babylonian cubit, therefore, that we find here. Think of God taking this as a measure of His own things! But what does this "cubit and an hand-breadth" mean? Meaning there is and must be everywhere, so that we are surely right in inquiring as to it. Such a detail is not given us without there being in it something that is to be carefully observed. The cubit, then, was the common, human measure. The hand-breadth added made it more than the human. That is surely plain, and it seems to refer us at once to what we have in Revelation, where the measure is stated to be "the measure of a man," but not an ordinary man -in fact, "the measure of an angel."
Let us look at these measures further. What is the cubit? It is simply the human fore-arm, the measure taken from the elbow-tip to the end of the little finger. The cubit is in Hebrew ammah, which in its application to it evidently means "support." The fore-arm is that upon which one supports oneself in various positions. Now, if this be the simple, human measure, there may yet be a divine meaning in it, for God works through everything, and nothing is left without the touch of His hand. Now the measure in human hands, and as used here, is, as we may say, the measure of accomplishment. A man lays down by measurement the house that he is projecting for himself. But while it is thus significant of what is to be humanly accomplished, the weakness of man comes out in his very measure. He needs in every undertaking, in everything that he accomplishes, the support of Another. He does what he is permitted and enabled to do -no more. The cubit by itself is, then, strictly human. But now, if we add the hand-breadth to it, this gives us plainly, according to what we have seen, what is beyond man; and if we look at the only occurrence of it elsewhere, we shall find it in the border which is made to the table of showbread, a "border of a hand-breadth round about." If the table speaks, then, of communion with God, which is the fundamental thought, the hand-breadth round about it is at once the divine guard and the divine support. The full breadth of the divine hand it is that is round about here. Now let us apply this to the cubit in Ezekiel. If the cubit show in itself human weakness, that will not do for what is before us in the vision of the prophet. The divine hand must come manifestly in. Man may be permitted his part in the structure which the prophet sees in vision, but it must be man enabled and guarded by the divine hand which is upon him. Ezekiel in his own person shows us this hand of the Lord in its effect upon himself (Eze 40:1). Thus the human element testifies to gracious communion on man’s part, which God permits and enables for. It testifies of how near to man God is coming, and of His desire for that wonderful intimacy which, as the Lord taught His disciples, when enjoyed upon earth, was the pledge and foreshadow of that that was to be eternal (Joh 14:2).
In Revelation, therefore, the interpreting angel is still the "man"; and the measurement, as we have seen, adapts itself to this. With Christ before us, we know well that the human measure now for God must be, nevertheless, beyond what is merely human.
But now let us look at the measurement of the temple-city itself. If the new Jerusalem be a temple, it is yet like none other that has existed. In the temple upon earth, and in the tabernacle before it out of which it grew, there was a holy place separate from the holiest in which alone God was (and yet how little was) displayed. The holy place as separate from the holiest shows, not what is in the mind of God for eternity, but what was of necessity on account of man’s present condition. He cannot unrestrictedly draw near to God. In the law, the dividing veil is shown us by the apostle to declare that the "way into the holiest was not yet manifest while the first tabernacle had its standing." That first tabernacle was but the ante-chamber to the true dwelling-place of God, and shut off from it, even in mercy to man in his present unfitness. The law could bring no one nigh. For us now, as we know, the "first tabernacle," as such, is abolished by the rending of the veil. Holy and holiest come together, and we have, blessed be God, the way made open for us into the holy places,* through the blood of Jesus.
{*See the notes on Heb 10:19.}
But let us look at the figures now. The tabernacle was 30 cubits long, in breadth 10, and in height 10. The holy place was 20 cubits long, the measurements otherwise being the same; and the holiest of all was but 10 cubits long, making it a perfect cube, the breadth and the length and the height of it being equal. The city here and the holiest are in perfect agreement. In the temple, the measurements were double those of the tabernacle, but relatively similar. The whole building was 60 cubits long, 20 broad, and 20 high, of which the holy place was 40 cubits long and the holiest 20, this being again, therefore, a perfect cube, the breadth and the length and the height of it equal. How easy to recognize in this the perfect realization of God’s mind only in the holiest. The cube speaks, as we see, everywhere of realization, and the number 3, which is its sign, of divine manifestation.
Let us still look at the numbers which are thus brought before us. The fundamental one is everywhere beautifully the number 5. The figures are 10s throughout, and 10 is in its meaning simply twice 5. But what is this number 5? Of what would it necessarily speak to us in such connections as are here? It speaks everywhere of man with God, as has been abundantly shown elsewhere. But it might be man with God as simply under divine government, and thus intimating responsibility -a responsibility, too, which, as he has taken it, has been so often interpreted in a way fatal to himself. But of this we can have nothing here. We have come to God’s accomplishment of His dwelling-place amongst men, and therefore nothing but grace or glory could enter into the thought. 5 in this way we read, therefore, in Immanuel -"God with us "certainly what tabernacle and temple, and much more the city before us, declare to us. 5 is therefore the fundamental number; that is, "God in relationship with man;" and here the number 10 only brings out still more distinctly the thought of this relationship; for almost the primary thought of the number 2 is just that of relation. Thus, then, the holiest itself, the very dwelling-place of God, is above all stamped with this thought, which in Christ we see accomplished, of God dwelling with man.
Now the measurement of the city, the New Jerusalem, is, as we have it in the common version, in its threefold measure, 12,000 furlongs. Here we have the 5 or 10 connected with another number which we see everywhere stamped upon the city too -the number 12: that is, the number which speaks of that perfect rule of God which is its certified and perfect blessedness. Let us dismiss for a moment the thought of the "furlong," which is human throughout, and nothing else. Furlong is "furrow-long," the length of the furrow which a plow makes in the field. The Greek word is stadia, of which, of course, the furlong is the natural enough translation, while this, however, is destitute of the thought which the word used by inspiration gives us, of something that is stable, fixed, as everything about this city is. We have come to that which stands forever, where there is not even a leaf that fades.
The 1000 is, of course, once more cubic. It is the cube of 10. If we read the whole together, the 12,000 stadia show us God in perfectly realized relationship with man, and therefore God of necessity in His supreme place as God: this, as the stadia show us, abiding. This is surely the real significance of the measurements of the one truly eternal city. The wall that guards it is 144 cubits, the real sacred cubit, as in this connection is pointed out to us, the 144 being, of course, but 12X12, the manifest supremacy of God in strongest emphasis. This is its height and thickness, no doubt, as the wall is similarly measured in Ezekiel, though with almost infinitely smaller numbers. Its length must be such as to surround the city, plainly. The divine glory fences it round on every side, save where the gates of pearl, the beauteous image of divine grace, open a way of access and of egress to its blessed inhabitants.
This, then, is the glory of the heavenly city, in the light of which the nations of the earth themselves walk, while the kings of the earth bring their glory unto it. As another has said, "They own the heavens and the heavenly kingdom to be the source of all, and bring there the homage of their power." And "they bring the glory and honor of the nations unto it." That is, "Heaven is seen as the source of all the glory and honor of this world." The nations are, as we shall see directly, undoubtedly the millennial nations; and it is no question of these entering themselves into the heavenly city; their glory and honor it is they bring; and though the words in the original admit the force of "into," they by no means compel it. The mention of the continually open gates speaks indeed of peaceful and constant intercourse, and we must remember that here is the abode of those who reign with Christ over the earth. Whether these are the "kings of the earth" meant, is, however, a question: if it were so, the "into" might be still the true sense.
The next statement as to the city regards those who do enter therein, that is, have part in the blessedness which is here depicted. In opposition to all defilement, one class alone has title here: it is "they who are written in the Lamb’s book of life." This surely shows that the whole of the Old Testament saints enter into the city. No one is excluded whose name is there: while, on the other hand, the millennial saints have as clearly their portion on earth -the new earth -in connection, indeed, with the "tabernacle of God," but not in it. The heavenly city remains always heavenly, and when it descends from heaven has then received its inhabitants. These distinctions, which indeed are gathered from elsewhere, are nevertheless to be kept in remembrance here, or all will be confusion.
We have next before us the "paradise of God," in which the city lies. Man’s paradise of old could not yet have the city; and when the city came, it was outside of paradise altogether. Here at last the two things are united.
We are of necessity reminded also of one of the closing visions of Ezekiel, while a comparison easily shows also the difference between the earthly and the heavenly in these pictures -the one being indeed the shadow, but no more than the shadow, of the other. John here sees "a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb." And in Ezekiel the life-giving waters issue forth from the house of the Lord; and this is specially noted in connection with the fruit of the trees that are nourished by it: "And by the river, upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to its months, because their waters issued out of the sanctuary; and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine" (Eze 47:12). How like the account in Revelation is to this, no one can fail to understand: even the language might seem to be taken from it: "In the midst of the street of it, and on this side of the river and on that, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve [manner of] fruits, and yielded its fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."
But in Ezekiel all is distinctly earthly, and the blessing is not yet full. The waters go down into the salt sea and heal it, so that a great multitude of fish are in its waters; but there are miry places and marshes that are not healed, but given over to salt. With both the Old Testament prophet and the New we see that the earth is yet in the millennial, not the eternal, condition; for the leaves of the tree are for medicine in both alike; there is in both need of healing yet.
The waters are in both cases from the sanctuary, for that is the character of the whole city of God. In Revelation they are specifically from the throne of God; for here the one blessedness is, as we have seen, that God reigns, -God revealed in that perfect grace that is expressed in Christ, -the throne of God being also that of the Lamb. Thus the water is the type, as always in its highest meaning, of the fulness of the Spirit, the power of life and sanctification -indeed, the power of God in all creation. The tree of life bears witness, as in the earthly paradise at first, of dependence upon Another, of life in dependence; but all the plenteous and varied fruits of this could not even be symbolized in the time of old: fresh fruits and abundant; who can tell the blessed meaning? or what Christ is to those that have their life in Him?
"And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him. And they shall see His face; and His name shall be in their foreheads." Thus He is openly theirs; they too are openly His. Service is taken up afresh in glory according to the fulness of that open-eyed and open-faced communion which is here so assured. It is indeed, when it has its proper character, communion itself. The love that serves us all is the love of God Himself, and of this Christ is the perfect expression. How is it possible to be in communion with Christ without the diligent endeavor to serve Him in the gospel of His grace, and in ministry to His people? In heaven service will not for a moment cease, although some precious possibilities of the present will have passed away indeed. Would that this were more realized, with the Lord’s estimate of greatness in the kingdom of which He is greatest of all!
But the Light! and our inheritance is in the light. To this the vision returns, and ends with it: "And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, nor light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign for the ages of the ages." Thus the reign of the saints is not for the Millennium only, nor simply as partakers of the power of the rod of iron. "If by one man’s offense death reigned through one, much more shall they who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life by one, Jesus Christ" (Rom 5:17). Reigning is, for the heavenly saints, inseparable from the life they enter into in the coming day. The new Jerusalem is a city of kings and priests -the bridal city of the King of kings. Here the eternal reign seems associated necessarily with the glory in which all here live and move. For those who were once sinners, -slaves of Satan, and of the lusts by which he enthralled them, to be delivered and brought, by the priceless blood of Jesus, into such communion as is here shown with the Father and the Son, -how can their condition be expressed in language less glowing than this -needing no candle, nor light of the sun, because the Lord God giveth them light -than that they reign for ever and ever?
6. The series of visions is thus completed. What remains is the emphasizing of its authority for the soul, with all that belongs to Him whose revelation it is, and who is Himself coming speedily. Thus the angel now affirms that "these words are faithful and true:" necessarily so because of Him whose words they are. "The Lord God of the spirits of the prophets hath sent His angel to show unto His servants things which must soon come to pass." Here we return to the announcement of the first chapter. The book is, above all, a practical book. It is not for theorists, or dreamers, but for servants -words which are to be kept, and to have application to their service in the Church and in the world.
The things themselves were soon to come to pass. In fact, the history of the Church, as the coming epistles depict it, could be found imaged, as we see, in the condition of existing assemblies. The seeds of the future already existed, and were silently growing up, even with the growth (externally) of Christianity itself. As to the visions following the epistles, from the sixth chapter on, we have acknowledged the partial truth of what is known as the historical fulfilment of these. It is admitted that there has been an anticipative fulfilment in Christian times of that which has definite application to the time of the end, although it is the last only that has been, in general, dwelt upon in these pages.
Historicalists will not be satisfied with such an admission, and, refusing on their side (as they mostly do) the general bearing of the introductory epistles upon the history of the Church at large, insist upon such affirmations as the present as entirely conclusive that the historical interpretation is the only true one. In fact, the view which has been here followed brings nearest to those in the apostles’ days the things announced, as well as makes the whole book far more fruitful and important for the guidance of servants. For how many generations must they have waited before the seals and trumpets would speak to these! and when they did, how much of guidance would they furnish for practical walk? The application of Babylon the great to Romanism is fully accepted, and that of Jezebel in the same way insisted on, so that as to the errors of popery we are as protestant as any, even if in the "beasts" of the thirteenth chapter we find something beyond this. But nothing of this could have been intelligible to the saints of the early centuries, while the fulfilment of Ephesus, Smyrna, and even Pergamos, would soon be of the first importance.
"The Lord God of the spirits of the prophets" -the reading now generally admitted to be right -emphasizes for us the presence of the living God as what was for these the constant realization in all the shifting scenes of human history. And so it is for those whose spirit is in harmony with them. God in past history, God in the events happening under our eyes, His judgment therefore of everything while controlling everything for His own glory and for the blessing of His people -in this respect how blessed to be guided by those wondrous revelations! while the future, to be learnt from the same infallible teaching, is not only that which animates our hopes, but is necessary for the judgment of the present no less. All lines lead on to the full end, there where the full light gives the manifestation of all.
"And behold, I come quickly." This is for the heart: future as long as we are down here, and yet to govern the present. "Blessed is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy of this book."
Here we are warned of the mistakes that may be made by the holiest of men in the most fervent occupation with heavenly things. John falls at the angel’s feet to worship him; but the angel refuses it, claiming no higher title than to be a fellow-servant with John himself, with his brethren the prophets, and with those also who keep the words of this book. And he adds, "Worship God;" -that is, worship no creature.
Unlike Daniel’s prophecies, the words of the prophecy of this book are not to be sealed up, for the time is near. To the Christian, brought face to face with the coming of the Lord, the end is always near. What time might actually elapse, is another question. In fact, some eighteen centuries have elapsed since this was written: but while Daniel was taught to look on through a vista of many generations to the end before him, Christians, taught to be always in an attitude of expectation, have before them no such necessary interval, and are brought into the full light now, though unbelief and wrong teaching may obscure it. But nothing in this way is under a veil save the moment, whose concealment is meant to encourage expectation. How good for us and fruitful, such concealment, may be measured by the goodness and fruitfulness of the expectation itself.
The solemn words are just ready to be uttered which proclaim the close of the day of grace to those who have refused grace. It is just ready to be said, "Let him that doeth unrighteously, do unrighteously still; and let the filthy make himself filthy still; and let him that is righteous, do righteously still; and he that is holy, let him be sanctified still." And when this applies is shown clearly in the next words, "Behold, I come quickly, and My reward with Me, to render to every one as his work shall be: I, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." The last affirmation here shows the irrevocable character of this judgment. He sums up in Himself all wisdom, all power: "None can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou?"
The way of life and the way of death are now put in contrast: "Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." Here is the condition of blessing stated according to the character of Revelation, in terms that have been used before. Our robes must be washed in the blood of the Lamb, as those of the redeemed multitude in the vision under the seals, in order to be arrayed in the white garments that are granted to the Lamb’s wife. A very old corruption in this text is that exhibited in the common version, "Blessed are they that do His commandments;" but which is the true reading ought to be apparent at once. It is not by keeping commandments that any one can acquire a right to the tree of life. On the other hand, condemnation is for committing evil: "Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie."
7. Again it is repeated, "I Jesus have sent Mine angel to testify these things unto you in the assemblies;" and then He declares Himself in the two relations among men in which the book has spoken of Him: "I am the root and the offspring of David" -the Jewish relation, the divine, incarnate King of Israel" the bright and Morning Star" -the Object of expectation for the Christian. But immediately He is named, -or, rather, names Himself in this way, -the heart of the Bride, moved by the Spirit, awakes: "And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come!" But because it is yet the day of grace, and the Bride is still open to receive accessions, it is added, "And let him that heareth say, Come!" And if one answer, "Ah, but my heart is yet unsatisfied," it is further said, "And let him that is athirst come; he that will, let him take the water of life freely."
Blessed is this testimony. The precious gifts of God are not restricted in proportion to their preciousness, but the reverse. In nature, sunlight, fresh air, the water-brooks, things the most necessary, are on that account bestowed freely upon all. And in the spiritual realm there is no barrier to the reception of the best gifts save that which the soul makes for itself. Not only so, but men are urged to come -to take -to look -with no uncertainty of result for those who do so. The stream that makes glad the city of God is poured out for the satisfaction of all who thirst and will but stoop to drink of it. This is the closing testimony of the gospel in this book; and that with which it is associated adds amazingly to its solemnity.
There is now another warning, neither to add to nor take from the words of the prophecy of this book. Scripture has many similar admonitions, but here the penalty is an unutterably solemn one. To him that adds, God shall add the plagues that are written in this book. From him who takes away, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and from the holy city. Yet men are now not scrupulous at least to take away many of the words of Scripture, and of Revelation among the rest. Every word is claimed here by the Lord Himself for God; and if this is not a claim for verbal inspiration, what is it? As manifestly the closing book of the New Testament Scripture, what may we not infer as to the verbal inspiration of other parts? And what shall be the woe of those who dare presumptuously to meddle with that which is the authoritative communication of the mind of God to man? Is it not being done? and by those who own that somewhere at least -and they cannot pretend to know exactly the limit -Scripture contains the word of God?
This announcement of penalty is Christ’s own word: "He who testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly." Is it not when His Word is being thus dealt with that we may more than ever expect Himself? When the testimony of Scripture is being invalidated and denied, is it not then that we may most expect the faithful and true Witness to testify in person? and especially when this arises in the most unlooked-for places, and Church-teachers laboriously work out a theology of unbelief?
And the promise abides as the hope of the Church, although it be true that the Bridegroom has tarried and the virgins have slept! That -true or false -a cry has been raised, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!" is notorious. That many have stirred, and taken up the old attitude of expectancy, is also true. All these things should surely be significant also. But whatever one’s head may say, -whatever the doctrine we have received and hold as to the coming of our Lord and Master, -the heart of the truly faithful must surely say with the apostle here, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."
It is the only response that answers to the assurance of His love on His departure to the Father: "In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you: I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, ye may be also."
The Lord’s coming -the parousia -is just the "presence" of the Lord Himself. Nothing short of this could satisfy the hearts of those who looked up after Him as He ascended with His hands spread in blessing over them, and were reassured by the angels’ voices that this same Jesus would come again. Just in proportion as we too have learnt by the Spirit the power of the love of Jesus, we too shall be satisfied with this, and with this alone. May we learn more deeply what is this cry of the Spirit and the Bride, "Amen; come, Lord Jesus!"
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Satan conquered. The Last Judgment
Satan conquered. The Last Judgment
In this chapter the visions of the overthrow of Christ's enemies are continued. The devil is bound for 1,000 years (Rev_20:1-3); the martyrs reign with Christ for 1,000 years (Rev_20:4-6). It is foretold that, at the end of the 1,000 years, Satan will be loosed, and will make a last assault against the saints, after which he is cast into the lake of fire (Rev_20:7-10). A vision of the Last Judgment follows (Rev_20:11-15).
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The binding of Satan and the reign of the saints with Christ, both for 1,000 years, is known as 'the Millennium.' Many of the later Jews expected that the Messianic kingdom, of which the prophets spoke, would come in the present age, and they distinguished it from the Pinal Judgment and new heaven of righteousness which would follow. By some it was said that the Messianic kingdom would last 1,000 years, though other periods were also named.
It is plain that St. John made use of this Jewish expectation in his prophecy. But it does not follow that he meant it to be understood literally. It is more in harmony with the character of the book to suppose that he meant this Jewish apocalyptic expectation to be understood spiritually. The same conclusion seems probable from the general circumstances. The Christians had just been told that the persecuting city and empire would be overcome. They might ask whether the devil, the author of all evil would not raise up fresh enemies against them.
1-3. For a thousand years the devil will be bound and shut up in the abode of spiritual evil (the 'abyss,' see on Rev_9:1, not 'the lake of fire,' which is the place of final punishment, see on Rev_19:20). The meaning is, that for '1,000 years' the power of evil would not be able to gather itself into an organised attack upon Christianity. The '1,000 years' are not to be understood numerically, but as a period of rest and happiness. For 1,000 is a multiple of 10, which was regarded as a sacred number because the commandments are 10;and it is the number which was considered to stand for the sabbath in the history of the world, 1,000 years' rest coming after 6,000 years' toil: cp. Psa_90:4.
4-6. The Christians for whom St. John wrote would ask what share they had in these joyful tidings. Although generations to come would enjoy rest and peace, it was not to be in their day, and many of them must suffer death. So they are told that good things are in store for them. Although they die, yet their souls will live and reign with Christ (Rev_20:4). 'The rest of the dead,' i.e. the ungodly dead, the men of the earth, 'lived not,' i.e. did not share in the presence of Christ, but remained for the Judgment: cp. Rev_20:11. The life of the saints with Christ is called 'the first resurrection' (cp. Joh_5:25), because it depends upon the resurrection from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. As such, it belongs to all who are Christ's, whether on earth or in paradise (Rev_20:5). Over them 'the second death' (cp. Rev_20:14, Rev_2:18) has no power, because they 'have passed from death unto life,' 1Jn_3:14;(Rev_20:6).
7-10. After the time of rest, and when the Final Judgment is near, the power of evil will gather force again (Rev_20:7). Gog and Magog, i.e. the world hostile to God's people, cp. Ezekiel 38 f. (Rev_20:8), will assail the Church (the 'camp of the saints and the beloved city,' i.e. the spiritual Jerusalem). But God will overthrow these last enemies (Rev_20:9), and the devil will be cast into the lake of fire, i.e. the power of evil will be destroyed for ever (Rev_20:10).
11-15. God sits on a 'great white throne,' i.e. in glory and purity (Rev_20:11), to judge the wicked dead. They are not written 'in the book of life' (cp. Rev_3:5; Rev_13:8; Rev_17:8; Rev_21:27), and they are judged according to their works (Rev_20:12.), and 'cast into the lake of fire.' Into the lake of fire. Death and Hades (i.e. the abode of the de"into attacking the Church"ad) are also cast, for 'the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death' (1 Cor 5:26; cp. Rev_21:4). This is the 'second death,' for it is the final separation from eternal life (Rev_20:14.). This judgment does not apply to Christ's people: cp. Joh_5:24. They are in the book of life. They already 'live' (cp. Rev_20:4), and, therefore, are not reckoned among the 'dead' of Rev_20:11.
It is plain that St. John's view is, as it were, foreshortened. He sees the overthrow of the anti-Christian persecution. He sees, farther on, the Last Judgment. But he does not specify the length of the time of rest and then of conflict for the Church which lies between.
1, 3. Bottomless pit] RV 'abyss.'
3. Him up] RV 'it.' Set a seal upon him] RV 'sealed it over him.' Deceive] i.e. into attacking the Church: cp. Rev_20:8, Rev_20:10, Rev_19:20; Joh_8:12, Joh_8:44.
Fulfilled] RV 'finished.'
4. Thrones] cp. Dan_7:9, Dan_7:22; Mat_19:28. They] i.e. the martyrs.
Witness] RV 'testimony,' i.e. the revelation made by Christ, 'the faithful witness': cp. Rev_1:5, Rev_1:9; Rev_12:17; Rev_19:10. Mark] cp. Rev_13:14. Reigned] The saints share Christ's triumph over sin and death, and also, in ways which we know not, share the glories of His kingdom: cp. Rev_5:10; Rom_8:17.
6. Priests] cp. Rev_1:6 note, Rev_5:10.
8. Deceive] see on Rev_20:3.
10. Shall be] RV 'they shal be.'
11. Throne] cp. Isa_6:1; Dan_7:9.
12. The books] RV 'books': cp. Dan_7:10.
Works] cp. Mat_16:27; Rom_2:6.
13, 14. Hell] RV 'Hades.'
14. The second death] RV 'the second death, even the lake of fire': cp. Rev_2:11; Mat_25:41.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv2, 5, 8, 10 thousand years
thousand years
The duration of the kingdom of heaven in its mediatorial form (See Scofield "1Co 15:24").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v7 After the Thousand Years and the New Jerusalem
CHAPTERS 20:7-22:5
After the Thousand Years and the New Jerusalem
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1. Satan’s last revolt (Rev 20:7-10)
2. The great white throne (Rev 20:11-15)
3. The eternal state (Rev 21:1-8)
4. The vision of the holy city (Rev 21:9-27)
5. The glories of the redeemed (Rev 22:1-5)
Rev 20:7-10.
Satan who was put into the abyss a thousand years before, is now loosed out of his prison. God permits him to come forth once more. Who would have ever thought of such a thing! The archenemy who had done his vile and wicked work among the human race, for a thousand years put at least into the place of perfect restraint, and now loosed once more to continue, for a brief season, his work! And he finds nations ready for his deception, not a few, but a number “as the sand of the sea.” God permits Satan to come out of his prison, so that the absolute corruption of man might be demonstrated. Man has been tried and tested under every possible condition. He has failed in every age. He failed under the law and he failed even more in the grace-dispensation; and now, under the most glorious conditions, during the millennium, when the Lord Himself is known in all the earth and reigns in righteousness, when want and nearly all the sorrows of a ruined creation are banished, when there is peace on earth, man also fails and does not fully respond to a gracious Lord.
But here is a difficulty which many have. Many a sincere post-Millennialist, who has studied the pre-millennial coming of our Lord, has asked this question, “If the whole world is converted during the millennium, how is it then that Satan finds nations ready to side with him after the thousand-year reign of Christ and then leads them on to destructions?” The difficulty is far from being as great as it is generally made. In fact it is easily explained. As far as Israel is concerned, the “all Israel” living, when He comes, the trusting remnant of Israel, they will constitute the blessed nation in possession of all her promised blessings. They are not mentioned as siding with Satan. No more backsliding for that nation. Isa 59:20-21 vouches for this.
And the Gentile nations in the beginning of the millennium will also be converted. However, the human conditions of the earth will continue. The nations are not in a glorified state. Marriage will continue. Children will be born during the millennium. Indeed the earth will be populated as never before. Billions of human beings can be sustained upon our planet and they will come into existence by natural generation during the golden age of glory. Wars will be unknown. No longer will the flower of manhood be cruelly murdered by human passion in that legalized horrible thing called war. Earthquakes will no longer sweep thousands upon thousands into an untimely grave, nor can famines and pestilences claim their millions. Nor will there be the great infant mortality. Physical death will no longer be the universal rule, but rather an exception (see Isa 65:20).
Now every child born during the millennium of the converted nations comes into the world the same as the children in the present age, it is still true, conceived and born in sin. And it is equally true, they must be born again.
As many children of pious, godly parents in this age are gospel-hardened and live on in sin, though they hear the gospel and see its power, so in the millennium, an enormous multitude will see the glory, live under the best and most glorious conditions the earth has seen since before the fall of man, and yet they will be glory-hardened and only submit to the righteousness of that age and yield obedience through fear, for disobedience to the governing laws of the kingdom on earth, will mean sudden and certain judgment. It is not the obedience produced by a believing, trusting heart, but only a feigned obedience. Three prophetic Psalms which speak of these millennial conditions make this clear, if we consider the marginal reading. “As soon as they hear of Me, they shall obey Me, the strangers shall yield feigned obedience unto Me” (Psa 18:44). “Say unto God, How terrible art Thou in Thy works! Through the greatness of Thy power shall Thine enemies yield feigned obedience unto Thee” (Psa 66:3). “The haters of the Lord yield feigned obedience unto Him, but their time might have endured forever” (Psa 81:15). Study these Psalms in their millennial bearing. Thus many nations submit while sin is in their heart and in their blindness they long and hope for the day when they may cast off the restraint. And that day comes when Satan is loosed out of the prison to deceive these nations again.
It was the final attempt of the dethroned usurper to regain his lost dominion. For thousands of years, in the all-wise purposes of God, he was permitted to be the prince of the power of the air and the god of this age. We have followed his history in this book and seen how he was cast out of heaven upon the earth where he caused the great tribulation. Then we beheld him stripped of all his power. The kingdoms of the world became the kingdom of Christ and the old serpent was cast unto the abyss where he remained a thousand years. Loosed for a little season he tried once more to become earth’s master. And fire out of heaven devoured the nations who had revolted.
The devil receives his final doom. He is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. He goes to a fixed place, a locality where unspeakable and eternal torment is his portion. This place is prepared for the devil and his angels (Mat 25:41). And all the wicked will share that place. And he finds others there. The first beings who were cast into this final abode were the beast (the emperor of the Roman empire, the little horn of Dan 7:1-28), and the false prophet (the personal Antichrist, the second beast of chapter 13). They were put there a thousand years before, and as they are there as persons it shows they were not annihilated. And they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever--for the ages of ages--never ending--for all eternity. What a solemn truth this is! Yet men meddle with it and deny future, conscious and eternal punishment. Besides these three persons, the nations who were judged and condemned in the beginning of the millennium, when the Son of Man sat upon the throne of His glory (Mat 25:31), are also in the Lake of Fire.
Rev 20:11-15.
And now we reach the last great judgment scene of God’s holy Word. Much confusion prevails among Christians about this judgment. There is no such thing in the Word of God as a universal judgment, nor is there a universal resurrection. Every human being that has died will be raised at some time. Our Lord spoke (Joh 5:28) of two resurrections, a resurrection unto life and a resurrection unto judgment. The Revelation speaks of the first resurrection. “This is the first resurrection” (Rev 20:5). And previously the apostle wrote of a resurrection from among the dead (Php 3:11). The first resurrection was finished in the beginning of the millennium. “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.” The rest of the dead come now into view and they are of necessity the wicked dead, who died in their sins, and whose is the resurrection unto judgment.
Some, like “Pastor” Russell, who echoes the evil teachings of others, have invented a third resurrection, a resurrection of the unsaved for a second chance. In the light of this final Bible book there is no room whatever for such a resurrection, which would give the lost another opportunity. Nor does the rest of the Bible mention such a third resurrection. And this great judgment is not a universal judgment. It is taught that the entire human race, the living and the dead, will appear before this great throne. But this is incorrect, for it saith, “I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God.” No living people are there at all. Again the judgment-scene in Mat 25:31, etc., is spoken of as being the universal judgment and identical with the judgment here in Revelation. But this is another error. In the judgment of Mat 25:1-46 the dead are not there, but living nations are judged in the beginning of the millennium. And these nations are judged on account of the treatment of the Jewish preachers of the gospel of the kingdom heralded by them during the last seven years of the age. They did not accept the last offer of mercy and that is why they treated the messengers as they did.
Furthermore, the throne which the Son of Man occupies in Mat 25:1-46 is upon the earth; the throne in Rev 20:11 comes into view after earth and heaven fled away. The Church and the saints of God are not concerned at all in the judgment of Mat 25:1-46, nor in the great white throne judgment. They are at that time in His own presence glorified. Every Christian should have these things clearly defined and know that for him, as in Christ, there is no more judgment or condemnation (Joh 5:24; Rom 8:1). The judgment seat of Christ before which believers have to appear (2Co 5:10) does not concern their eternal salvation, but their works and rewards.
Who is the occupant of this great white throne? Not God the Father, but God the Son. “The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (Joh 5:22). The earth and heaven fled from His face. Sin-stained and defiled as they were they flee away from the face of the Holy One. The great conflagration of 2Pe 3:7-12 takes place. (See Annotations on 2Pe 3:1-18.) Fire of judgment swept the earth before the millennium, the day of the Lord, began; but the all consuming fire comes after the millennium. out of that great conflagration there arises a new heaven and a new earth (Rev 21:1).
But what about the millions of saved Israelites and Gentiles who are on the millennial earth? Where are they during this great conflagration? What becomes of them? That they share the eternal blessings and glories in the eternal state is certain. But their abode between the burning of the earth and the calling into existence of the new heaven and the new earth is unrevealed. Speculation on it would be wrong. We should accept the silences of Scripture as much in faith as we accept the promises of God.
And John sees the dead standing before the throne. Books were opened and another book was opened, the book of life. “And the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their works.” The books are symbolical; conscience and memory will speak loudly. Twice we read that they are judged according to their works. And in the “book of life” none of their names were written, or they would not have been in that company. “All this would seem to show that, though a millennium has passed since the first resurrection, yet no righteous dead can stand among this throng. The suggestion of the ‘book of life’ has seemed to many to imply that there are such; but it is not said that there are, and the words ‘whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire’ may be simply a solemn declaration (now affirmed by the result) that grace is man’s only possible escape from the judgment” (Numerical Bible).
The second resurrection takes place. The sea gives up the dead and death and Hades give up the dead. Hades gives up the soul, and death, used here for the grave, gives up the bodies. Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. Both had come into existence because man had sinned, and, therefore, they are cast into the place where all belongs which is contrary to the holiness and righteousness of God. And then that solemn word! “And whosoever was not found written in the Book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” It corresponds to that other solemn statement in Joh 3:36. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth upon him.” To be written in the “book of life” means to have life in Christ. Not our works, not our character, not our religiousness, not our tears, our prayers or our service can put our names in the “book of life.” Grace alone can do it, and grace does it, as we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Reader! is your name written there?
The saints of God are in eternal glory; the wicked dead, the lost, are in an eternal lake of fire and suffer conscious, eternal punishment. And how man, blind, presumptuous man, yea, even such who know God, rise up against this solemn truth, the eternal punishment of the wicked. They accuse God of injustice, as if the judge of all the earth would not do right. That the suffering of the lost differs is obvious. It is eternal, because the evil condition remains unchanged. There is no repentance, no faith, no new birth in hell. As there are different rewards for the faithful service of the saints, so are there different degrees of punishment for the unsaved (Luk 12:47-48). This is the second death, not blotting out of existence, but endless in a separation from God.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 7 Of the Dragon Bound and Loosed, of Gog and…
Of the Dragon Bound and Loosed, of Gog and Magog, and of the Last Judgment.
Satan’s binding for one thousand years:
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v. 1. And I saw an angel come down from heaven having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
v. 2. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
v. 3. and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled; and after that he must be loosed a little season.
The Book of Revelation is not a history of events given in chronological order, but a series of visions dealing with the chief dangers and the principal blessings which would come upon the Church of Christ. The visions thus supplement one another and dovetail into one another in a composite picture. Only by keeping this fact in mind are we able to understand the present vision. The seer writes: And I saw an angel descending out of heaven having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. The angel here spoken of was either one of God’s spirits specially delegated for this work, or it was the great Angel of Jehovah, the Son of God Himself; for it is He that has the keys of death and of hell, chap. 1:18; it is He that has the power to bind all enemies, whether material or spiritual. It was the exalted power and majesty of Christ that here appeared with the implements necessary to put an enemy under restraint.
This the angel proceeds to do: And he overpowered the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him thousand years, and threw him into the abyss, and shut and sealed it above him, lest he seduce the heathen yet also, until thousand years should be fulfilled. After these he is bound to be loosed for a short time. So the devil, who is fitly called a dragon, a ferocious monster, the old serpent, who has been deceiving men since the time of Adam and Eve, was deprived of his power for a definite space of time; not that he and his hordes would be absent from the world entirely, but that they would not be able, during this time, to seduce also the heathen and make them their allies. It would thus be a season of comparative quiet for the Church of Christ; for Satan would be rendered harmless to the extent of being bound in the pit, which was sealed over him. While the heathen were in his power, were his servants, the spell of Satan’s authority would no longer hold them with the chains of absolute tyranny. With the message of Satan’s defeat, which went out in the Gospel of the resurrection of Jesus, the devil’s hold was broken. The length of time for which this condition should obtain was definitely determined with God, though probably not in terms of time as we use it. And when the last hour of these thousand years are at an end, then Satan will be loosed for a short while, then the Gospel’s phenomenal and victorious march through the nations will be at an end. It is not that the Day of Judgment will then come, for God has determined that the time of the New Testament should include the thousand years of the Gospel’s victorious spreading through the nations, plus the little season of Satan’s being loose. "Satan shall be loosed, not for his own sake, neither for the sake of those who during the period of his binding have disregarded the sweet Gospel-call; Satan is loosed for the sake of the dear children of God. This loosing of Satan is for a fiery trial of God’s children; and that it is at the same time a judgment upon the unbelievers is their own fault. In this fiery trial God intends to purify the faith of His children from all dross and make it strong... Thus vv. 1-3 tell us that John saw Jesus, the mighty Conqueror, bind Satan, so that, through the greater part of the New Testament time, he should not prevent the preaching of the Gospel and the winning of the nations for Christ, and that for a little season immediately preceding, and ushering in, the day of final Judgment Satan should be loosed."
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 5, 7, 9 General Information:
General Information:
John begins to describe a vision of an angel throwing the devil into the bottomless pit.
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Then I saw
Here "I" refers to John.
bottomless pit
This is an extremely deep narrow hole. Possible meanings are 1) the pit has no bottom; it continues to go down further forever or 2) the pit is so deep that it is as if it had no bottom. See how you translated this in Revelation 9:1.
dragon
This was a large, fierce reptile, like a lizard. For Jewish people, it was a symbol of evil and chaos. (See: Symbolic Language)
sealed it over him
The angel sealed the pit to keep anyone from opening it. AT: "sealed it to prevent anyone from opening it" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
deceive the nations
Here "nations" is a metonym for the people of the earth. AT: "deceive the people-groups" (See: Metonymy)
the thousand years
"1,000 years" (See: Numbers)
he must be set free
This can be stated in active form. AT: "God will command the angel to free him" (See: Active or Passive)
translationWords
angel
heaven
pit
serpent
Satan
seal
deceive
nation
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 20:1-10 There are three parts to this passage: the…
20:1-10 There are three parts to this passage: the binding of Satan (20:1-3), the reign of God’s holy people (20:4-6), and the release of Satan for his final attempt at a battle (20:7-10). Four themes emerge: (1) Satan’s war is futile—he cannot withstand even an angel; (2) God’s holy people will be vindicated and glorified; (3) God will have the final victory; and (4) even when sinful and depraved human beings experience Christ’s good purposes in the world, they still flock after Satan when he gains even a small amount of freedom to act.
20:1-2 Like the Old Testament “angel of the Lord” (see Gen 16:7-11; 22:15; Exod 3:2; Num 22:22-34; Judg 2:1-4; 6:11-22), the angel coming down from heaven has God’s authority, symbolized by the key that controls the bottomless pit and the power to put chains on God’s great enemy (cp. Rev 12:7-9) for a thousand years. See “The Thousand Years (The Millennium)” Theme Note.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.