Revelation 20 opens with an angel from heaven with the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand, laying hold on the old serpent, the Devil, and binding him for a thousand years, that is, during the course of the Millennium. The bottomless pit, or, as it should be more correctly named, the abyss, is not hell, the lake of fire, but a place where God can confine evil, allowing it liberty if it be His will, as under the fifth trumpet the angel used the key to open it, thus allowing hordes of demoniacal legions to overrun the earth.
But in this case the key is used to shut up the abyss and confine therein Satan as prisoner. Yet even in this act we are told the length of his imprisonment—a thousand years—and how he must once more appear on the earth for a little season.
Verse 4 introduces us to the sessional judgment of Christ, as recorded in Matthew 25:31-46. If the armies of heaven do not participate in the fighting—one blow from the sword out of the mouth of Him who rides the white horse suffices for that—here we find the saints set to judge the world.
There are two classes mentioned in this verse—they, referring to the saints generally, and the souls of them that had been martyred since the rapture of the Church, during the time of tribulation on the earth.
The Millennium is given us in one short sentence: “They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” Of course Revelation 21:9-27; 22:1-5 gives us the Church as the center of administration during the Millennium, throwing much light on the subject, as also do Old Testament prophecies, such as Isaiah 65:17-25.
It is very interesting to note that when Isaiah speaks of “New heavens and a new earth” (Isa. 65:17), he refers to the regenerated, renewed, Millennial earth. A cursory reading of the passage will prove this statement. It speaks of Jerusalem in a very distinct way; it speaks of the possibility of death: “The child shall die an hundred years old”; and of sin: “The sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed.” Doubtless all the moral glory of the reign of Christ will go on into the eternal state, thus linking on the expression, “New heavens and a new earth,” with the New Testament expression, but only in a moral way.
But when Revelation 21:1 speaks of a new heaven and a new earth, it refers to the eternal state. After the Millennium has run its course, and Satan has risen in his last fearful rebellion, and met once and for all his doom, after the present heavens and earth shall have been destroyed, as prophesied in Revelation 20:11, we see the eternal state in all its blessedness. It is certainly a new creation, not a renovation. But more as to this later on.
A little reflection helps us to perceive the rightness of a Millennium upon this earth. Christ has an earthly people, and He has claims of a special kind upon them. These are to be acknowledged. Thus the rejection of the Messiah is to be followed in the ways of God by His acceptance and reign.
In the eternal state all distinction as to Jew and Gentile will have passed away; not so in the Millennium. It is seemly that the very place where the Messiah has been rejected shall be the place of His acceptance and glory.
Verses 5 and 6 are most important, giving us the blessedness of the first resurrection, and putting an interval of at least one thousand years between the first and the second, informing us that those raised at the first resurrection are blessed, and that they become the priests of God and His Christ, reigning with Him a thousand years. How any one able to read can contend for the doctrine of a general resurrection in the face of this plain Scripture one is at a loss to conceive!
It is not a little remarkable that the expression “first resurrection” should not be used till we are on the very threshold of the Millennium.
If the resurrection of the Old Testament saints, and of the New Testament saints who have passed away, at the second coming of Christ completed the first resurrection, it is reasonable to suppose that it would be so designated.
But very evidently from this passage of Scripture it includes all those who are raised for blessing, and who will take part in the Millennial reign of Christ.
It is plain that the resurrection, which will take place at the second coming of Christ, will form the great event of the first resurrection, but that there will be supplementary events completing the first resurrection is likewise clear.
The fifth seal discloses one of these supplementary events. The saints martyred whilst the opening seals run their course are bidden to rest for a little season till their fellow-servants and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled, that is, they had to wait for the resurrection of their bodies till those, who should later join them in martyrdom, might be raised with them.
In Revelation 11 resurrection is affirmed of the two witnesses in the great tribulation, symbolical, we believe, of a godly remnant, who shall give adequate testimony during that awful time of trial, and who shall seal their testimony with their blood. This class probably answers to “their fellow-servants... and their brethren” mentioned in Revelation 6:11.
These two companies would appear to be classed together in Revelation 20:4, described as “the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands.”
The following verse affirms the blessedness of those, who shall have part in this glorious first resurrection, most evidently including all mentioned in the previous verse. The “they” in that verse refers to the four and twenty elders, who sit upon thrones, and then the souls of the beheaded are seen, immediately before the statements of “the first resurrection.”
These later classes had been called for earthly blessing, to look for the coming King. By their martyrdom they are rewarded with a heavenly blessing, they are priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. Of course the Church has beyond this her special and unique place of blessing and glory.
The Millennium will begin by “these My brethren” and the sheep of Matthew 25 going into eternal life, that is, into Millennial blessing. Under the peaceful sway of Christ, when the curse of sin shall be lifted off the earth for the time being, population will largely increase and multitudes be born, who will not all be converted, and who, alas! will prove ready tools for Satan's plans, when he is loosed from the abyss after the Millennium has run its course. We pause to ask, Will the personal reign of Christ have altered men, will He so have impressed upon them righteousness and peace, that men will be able to resist the wiles of Satan? Alas! no. Man in the flesh is incorrigibly bad. Nothing but a new creation will put things right.
Multitudes, like the sand of the sea, from the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, will come up as energized and marshaled by Satan in this last impious rising against God. The sad and evil history of fallen man is about to be closed. They come up against the beloved city—Jerusalem. Fire comes from God and devours them,
It is interesting to note that in the pre-Millennial battle it is Christ who slays His enemies by the breath of His mouth. In this post-Millennial battle it is God that consumes His foes.
Gog and Magog figure in Ezekiel 38 and 39 as the enemies of God's people in pre-Millennial times; here again they are enemies in post-Millennial times. In Ezekiel prior to the Millennium multitudes are killed. It will take seven months to bury the slain, and the captured instruments of war will furnish enough fuel to supply the needs of the Israelitish nation for seven years, without having to cut down growing timber; in Revelation in post-Millennial times Gog and Magog and their multitudes are consumed outright.
This is followed by the devil being cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the Beast and the False Prophet are, to be tormented there day and night forever and ever. At length in the wisdom of God the arch-enemy of the human race meets his doom.
This is a deeply interesting passage. First, it disposes of the man-made theory of annihilation. The Beast and False Prophet will have been more than a thousand years in the lake of fire, when their associate in evil shall have found his place with them. No hint is given but that their condition is one of fixed torment. As to the Devil, it is solemnly stated that he will be tormented day and night forever and ever—the strongest asseveration in human language of eternal torment.
And now at one step we leave time behind and enter eternity—solemn moment. The Seer beholds a great white throne. Everything is stated positively. There is, and can be, no comparison. A great white throne! It stands by itself in its vast proportions and unstained dazzling purity. The last session of judgment is entered upon.
And John sees Him, who sits upon it. We know the Sitter to be the Lord Jesus, for does not John tell us in another place that “the Father ... hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22)?
From His face the earth and heaven flee away—that earth that witnessed the sin of our first parents, that beheld the crucifixion of the Son of God, that has been the theater of man's recent impious attempts under the leadership of Satan against God and His throne—that earth, scarred by sin, saturated by blood and tears—that earth and its heaven will forever pass away. With the destruction of the material universe, as foretold here and in 2 Peter 3:10, time will cease to be, and the great white throne will be set up in eternity.
The second resurrection takes place—“the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:29). All the sleeping saints will have been raised at the first resurrection, awakened to bliss and happiness untold, and the living saints changed in a moment and caught up with them to the clouds at the second coming of Christ.
None but the wicked dead will participate in the second resurrection. The books are opened, and another book, the book of life. Man in accountable. His deeds are marked, whether he be small or great. Every one is judged according to his works.
Death and Hades deliver up the dead in them, and are cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death. This is equivalent to saying that the wicked dead raised at the second resurrection are doomed righteously by the testimony of the recording books to the lake of fire.
Death is not a place but a condition, namely, that of the body without the soul. Hades is not a place but a condition, the correlative of Death, namely, that of the soul without the body. When the soulless bodies are reunited to the bodyless souls, the resurrected sinners will represent Death and Hades, and in their persons Death and Hades are cast into the lake of fire.
From other Scriptures we know that doom to be eternal. Death never means annihilation, but always change of condition. Death has not annihilated the bodies, for they are raised; Hades has not annihilated the souls, for they are summoned to re-inhabit the bodies of resurrection.
Nor will they be annihilated in the lake of fire. There the fire is not quenched nor does the worm die. Everlasting punishment is as everlasting as everlasting life (see Matt. 25:46).
For those who would inquire into this subject more fully we would introduce them to a pamphlet to be obtained of our publishers.