CHAPTER 20:1-6
[p. 83] CHAPTER 20:1-6
We have seen the judgment of Babylon by God, and that of the beast and of the false prophet by Jesus. We find now the judgment falling on Satan,+ the spring, the power, and the strength of all this iniquity. The heart of man was the soil in which all this was sown. Satan, nevertheless, was the author of it.
Verses 1-3. The fact that Satan shall be bound is of the greatest importance to the world. One can hardly form an idea of the difference it will produce as to the world; we have very little idea of the corruption, the subtlety, and wickedness of the heart of man, and of the power of Satan. One of the principal characters of the dispensation to come is that Satan is bound. That is quite a new thing for the world. As wicked and the seducer, Satan is the serpent; as having power, he is the dragon; as adversary, he has the name of Satan; as accuser, that of the devil. Satan, in causing Adam to fall in sin, had taken away all the creation from him, and thereby from God. Adam, as the image of Him that was to come, had the possession of all the earth. Satan seduced him. Adam and Eve fell, and with them the creation. This link being broken, the whole falls: all is ruined in its head, and separated from God; and Satan figures as prince of the world. God intervenes in many ways; among others, by the deluge; the world, notwithstanding, plunges into idolatry, and by this falls more than ever under Satan’s power.
+The warrior judgment by the Lord ends in the destruction of the beast and of its armies; chapter 20: 1 — 3 brings before us Satan bound after this judgment. Verse 4 begins again, and we have to the end of the chapter sessional judgment — sessional judgment on a throne, whether it be at the beginning of the millennium, or during its duration, or after. Verses 3, 4 are not historically consecutive, although generally, in point of the subject, they are so.
[p. 84] In the word, no mention is made of idolatry before the deluge. Man, as man, has adored Satan, and in many places is still adoring him. The philosophers of antiquity adored him themselves, no less than the pagans of our days. God has proved in His wisdom that man by wisdom did not know God; and this is where man’s wisdom has led him. In order to destroy idolatry God separated to Himself a nation, manifested His glory to it, spoke to it, and made Himself known to it. Nevertheless, before Moses had come down again from the mount, Israel had already made the golden calf, and had thus put themselves under Satan’s power, in spite of the barrier that God had raised around His people.+ God sent afterwards His own Son, the Last Adam, although not yet manifested as such. Christ is, in fact, the Last Adam, and the Father of the spiritual race, only after His resurrection; as Adam, on the other hand, became the father of the fallen race after his fall. Satan addresses himself also to Jesus, led into the desert by the Spirit, to tempt Him as he tempted Adam, but in vain. Jesus, having bound the strong man, casts out the demons, shewing thereby what power Satan was exercising in those that were possessed. In order to shew that it is not the iniquity of man that is called the demons, the legion enter the swine, and act in those animals. The demons ask that they may not be sent into the bottomless pit,++ the time for them to be sent there not having come yet. Seeing that he could do nothing more to seduce Him or to destroy the effect of His power, Satan raises the whole world against Him. And as Jesus had made Himself surety for our sin, Satan, who has the power of death, uses this right of death against Jesus+++ made sin for us. All that man was had been ruined and was under the power of death It is in the resurrection of Jesus that the victory is found again, and the proof of the judgment of the prince of this world.
+It is remarkable that while relating how they had rejected all God’s appeals to them to return to Him in repentance, Stephen, in making mention of the actual captivity of the Jews, speaks of their sin in the desert, specially of that of idolatry, as the cause.
++That is to say, where we see them shut up in this chapter.
+++This is very far from being all that is in the blessed Lord’s death; but I confine myself to this point here.
[p. 85] In the meanwhile, the time for the execution of the judgment had not yet come, and Satan is still dwelling in the heavenly places (not in the heaven, which God inhabits in light inaccessible, but in the created heavens). The death of Jesus has not expelled him thence. Nevertheless, when, in the name of Jesus, the disciples cast the demons out of creation, Jesus says, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” He foresees the downfall of Satan by the power of the name of Jesus. Actually, Satan acts still in the creation, as we see in the case of Job. Jesus is now absent — in heaven. Not being bound, Satan tries and tempts man, and man falls. He is busy about the church; he sows tares there, and spoils the work of God upon earth. He cannot spoil it in heaven.
We see, in this recapitulation of what Satan accomplishes upon the earth, how he spoils everything until he is bound. God, it is true, watches over the faithful; nevertheless, Satan is in the world, and spoils there the work of God; and if our salvation were resting on man’s own responsibility, there would be no salvation for us. Men of the world can form no idea of the manner Satan is blinding the heart. Before God gives them up to it as a chastisement, Satan is already using his power in blinding men, and in making them fall into error. From the beginning to the period to which this chapter of Revelation brings us, all that God has done upon the earth, in the world, and in the church, has been spoiled through Satan. Satan has influence in the world; he blinds the heathen and the christianised world. Alas! he also blinds God’s children as to their inheritance and as to the coming of the Lord Jesus. Satan endeavours to rob the church of this truth, and to make her say “My Lord delayeth his coming.” He will not have it that one should believe his dominion is going to be overthrown; but at the same time, truth is professed and maintained even by unconverted persons, and subsists as given of God amongst men. But now in the time of judgment this will be no more so; God gives men up to an efficacious error that they may believe a lie.
We have seen in chapter 12 Satan cast out from heaven. He will never enter there again. He falls upon the earth, and causes Antichrist to revolt against Christ. Then Christ comes down from heaven, destroys the beast and the false prophet, and binds Satan himself. All that Satan did to the first Adam disappears. Creation ceases to be under his dominion, and man, delivered from Satan’s power, passes under that of Jesus. Evil may remain in man’s heart, but Satan is banished from the scene of this world. The Judge, the Last Adam, comes down from heaven in the power of the victory He has already gained in the resurrection. This is not yet the state of eternity. These are things manifested on the earth, where Jesus shall reign after having bound Satan and delivered the creation from the bondage of corruption.
[p. 86] Why not bind Satan immediately? Because the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God; Romans 8: 19. Christ cannot manifest Himself in the glory and in the judgment, nor deliver the world without having delivered and raised the church, nor before the judgment be given to the church as well as to Christ. “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?” (1 Corinthians 6: 2; Dan 7: 22). “Until the Ancient of days comes, and judgment be given to the saints of the Most High.” Therefore it is that creation is not yet delivered from the yoke of corruption. The church risen must judge the world with Christ. The world to come is also to be subjected to the same trial. This does not take place during the continuance of the thousand years of Christ’s reign — only at the end of that reign, when Satan comes up out of the bottomless pit. Then, as always, man fails immediately.
While Satan is bound there is no seduction, and, consequently, no combat, no suffering, no victory. God permits these things to take place now, that we may have the glory. The most ordinary precepts of the gospel suppose the superiority of the enemy as to this world, and command not to resist evil; they suppose, therefore, a state of suffering. If the world were really Christian, these precepts would not be applicable, because there would be nothing to suffer.
Verses 4-6. There are thrones. Daniel says (chapter 7: 9), “I beheld till the thrones were cast down” (or rather placed) Daniel only sees the thrones; here we see there are those seated on the thrones. Now, there is suffering; then, we shall reign with Christ, and we shall be on Jesus’ throne; Revelation 3: 21. “The glory which thou gavest me, I have given them,” John 17: 22. The world will see this glory, and will know that we have been loved as Christ has been loved. When Christ shall sit upon the throne of His glory, we shall be seated on thrones. This mediatorial kingdom, in which Christ is seated on His throne, will at the end be given up to God the Father; 1 Corinthians 15: 24. The beheaded are those who have suffered for their testimony during the course of the events which we have seen in the Revelation. Besides those who are seated upon thrones, and those who were beheaded, we perceive here a third class, that of those who have not received the mark of the beast — negative faithfulness, it is true, but which is not forgotten. These three classes (those that are seated on thrones, those that were beheaded, and those who have not received the mark of the beast) have equally part in the first resurrection, which takes place a thousand years before the resurrection of the dead who are dead in their sins.
[p. 87] There have been those who have wished to make of the first resurrection a resurrection of principles; but the triumph of principles, mine or those of others, cannot be a personal reward for having been beheaded for those principles. To use a figure of language, one might strictly say that principles are reigning; but how could one say that they shall be priests? Those that rise reign a thousand years with Christ and shall be made kings and priests; and this cannot be applied in any way to principles, but only to the persons of the risen saints.
We see then here Satan bound, Jesus reigning over the earth, and the faithful reigning with Jesus Himself. It is necessary to understand well that Satan spoils all the work of God in the earth. The death of Jesus banishes Satan from the conscience indeed, but does not banish him from heaven. The power of Christ destroys the power of Satan; but this power will never be so much manifested as in the person of Antichrist. We have to contend until Satan be cast out from heaven.