REVELATION 20
We come now to the closing scenes of this world’s history. Satan bound; the suffering and martyred saints recompensed in being made to live and reign [p. 206] with Christ a thousand years; then the final outbreak of evil when Satan is loosed, and its complete overthrow by divine power; and, lastly, the great white throne set up in eternity for the judgment of those who have died in their sins. Satan is the evil being who has been the prime mover behind the scenes throughout all the history of human wickedness. But after the judgment of his two chief agents — the beast and the false prophet — he will be bound for a thousand years. The different names by which he is here described bring out the different characters in which he has acted.
As “the dragon” he has sought the destruction of the Man Child, and of the woman who bore Him, and of the remnant of her seed. He has also under this title sought to usurp the rights of Christ as to the kingdom. “The ancient serpent” carries our thoughts back to the garden of Eden, and reveals him as the great beguiler and deceiver, the one who knows how to awaken, and appeal to, men’s lusts, and get power over them in that way. Then “the devil” is the great traducer and slanderer, the one who has through all ages slandered God to His poor fallen creature, and who has ever been the accuser of the brethren. “Satan” is the adversary; the one who has always opposed and hindered the actings of God to the utmost of his power. Whatever God has been doing, Satan has always been resisting and fighting against, both in the world and amongst the people of God. There could hardly be a greater deception than for the ancient serpent to persuade men that he does not exist. Persons who deny the personality of the devil are themselves examples of how he can deceive. But the [p. 207] time is coming when all these activities will cease. Satan will be bound and cast into the abyss.
“And I saw thrones; and they sat upon them”. What a contrast is before us here! Satan bound, and the saints enthroned! It reminds one of the word, “But the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly” (Romans 16: 20). In Revelation 5: 10 these saints reigning is the fruit of redemption by blood; it is the Lamb who has brought it all to pass, and He alone is worthy. But here they sit on thrones as God’s righteous recompense for their sufferings. They are “counted worthy of the kingdom of God” (2 Thessalonians 1: 5), for they have been “beheaded on account of the testimony of Jesus, and on account of the word of God”. They had “not done homage to the beast nor to his image, and had not received the mark on their forehead and hand”. They will have gone along with the testimony of the Man accepted by God during the time that the man rejected by God was in the ascendant, and they will have suffered for it even to death. Men will refuse that kind of mind altogether, and behead them. But they will sit on thrones, and no one will be able to challenge their right to do so, for they will have suffered to death in the maintenance of fidelity to the principles which will be supreme in their reigning time.
Saints of the assembly do not appear in this chapter; it is martyred saints of the tribulation period. Of course, saints of the assembly will reign too, and we have to hold today the testimony of Jesus and the word of God. Paul says, “Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body” (2 Corinthians 4: 10). If we are to reign the question of competency is [p. 208] raised. How many cities could you rule over for Christ? What have you learned in the school of God that you could bring to bear on others as a divine influence? It is that little bit that has cost you something that is really effective; what you have suffered for, you can administrate. The administration of the world to come will be perfect; no person will take any part in it without being qualified to do so. In principle it is so today; the Lord does not send incompetent servants. He gives them spiritual competency for the service He intends them to render — a competency which is not of themselves but of God. Paul’s three years in Arabia, Peter’s trance on the housetop, are illustrations of how servants are prepared for their work. The incidents of Luke 8 were a wonderful preparation for the sending forth of the twelve in the next chapter. It was a course of education to teach the disciples the ability of Christ to deal with the most difficult and hopeless cases, so that they might go forth without any misgiving. They were qualified by what they had learned of Him. In this connection it is important to notice that these saints in Revelation 20 lived as well as reigned “with the Christ”. They will be in association with Christ in life, and those who live with Him are qualified to exert influence of the same character as His; they can reign with Him.
“Priests of God, and of the Christ”, is different from “priests to his God and Father” in chapter 1: 6, and “to our God” in chapter 5: 10. Priests to God would suggest priestly service Godward, but priests of God would rather be what they are in priestly activity towards men. There will be the administration of succour and priestly support, so that the [p. 209] kingdom will not be marked by exaction, but by the supply of all that man needs to sustain him in his relations to God and to his neighbour. What God is and what Christ is will be ministered to men. Even the Lord will be “a priest upon his throne” (Zechariah 6: 13). We are sustained in a scene of contrariety; they will be sustained in a scene of blessing; they will not be self-supporting even then.
If we are learning to administrate as kings by acquiring the ability to distinguish both good and evil, and by suffering for righteousness, we are learning also how needful priestly support is by the experience of our own weakness, and of the grace of Christ in sustaining us. And I think God is teaching us in contact with our fellow-saints to exercise priestly service towards them in a ministry of comfort and support. Melchisedec is the great type of Christ as the Royal Priest, and he brought forth bread and wine; he ministered support and joy to those who had come victoriously through conflict. Christ will do this in the coming day for saints on earth who have come through the terrible conflict of the last days as overcomers. And the saints who have a place on thrones as reigning with Him will also have part in priestly service towards men as “priests of God and of the Christ”. Christ will exercise His kingly power in priestly grace, and His saints will take character from Him. We are learning in our relations with one another now how to bring divine and spiritual influences to bear on others; that is the reigning side. But we are also learning how to minister support to all that is of God and of Christ in His saints, and this is the priestly side. It is all qualifying us for the place which we shall fill in the world to come.
“[p. 210] When the thousand years have been completed” there will be one last and terrible proof given of man’s awful condition as fallen. In some respects it will be more dreadful, because of its universality and wilfulness, than anything that has taken place before. Not in some limited spot, but “on the four corners of the earth”, there will be an outbreak of rebellion against the rule of Christ and the saints. As soon as Satan is loosed from his prison, men far and wide will be ready to respond at once to his deceptions. The awakening of the lawless lusts of men will make them antagonistic to the holy and righteous rule of the kingdom of God.
Some might be inclined to ask, “How could they possibly experience the blessedness of Christ’s reign, and then rebel against Him?” But have we not known what is, in a smaller sphere, quite as dreadful as this? Have we not seen children sheltered under the care of christian parents from the evils of the world, and from many of Satan’s snares, and who seemed to be happy in a circle where the influence of Christ was known, who have gone fully into the world as soon as they were tested by its attractions? Have we not seen persons appear to enjoy the blessings of grace, and to find their interests and happiness in Christ and His saints, and then seen them get into a state where they have thrown off, at any rate for a time, all divine restraint? Then have we not found out what the flesh is in our own experience? Its rebelliousness may have been checked, through infinite mercy, but we know its inward workings. In spite of all that we have tasted of what pertains to the household of faith, we know that in our flesh good does not dwell. “The mind of the flesh is enmity [p. 211] against God: for it is not subject to the law of God; for neither indeed can it be” (Romans 8: 7). Nothing but mercy keeps any one of us, and the deeper the sense we have of this the safer we are.
God will shut up Satan for a thousand years, and in the absence of his deceivings and temptings many men will submit to the rule of Christ, and enjoy its external benefits, without being born again. But even a thousand years of millennial blessedness will not change the flesh. God has allowed us to see this plainly, that we may “not trust in flesh”. And it also raises solemn exercise as to whether we are merely going on with divine things outwardly. External privileges — christian parentage, baptism, the breaking of bread, the company of the saints, abundant ministry — are no security of blessing. There must be real heart and conscience work, a personal having to do with God.
Verse 9 would intimate that the saints will be found together even in the millennium. “The camp of the saints” suggests this. “The beloved city” is, I suppose, Jerusalem — the city whose name shall be Jehovah Shammah, “Jehovah is there” (Ezekiel 48: 35). The saints will find a centre of attraction in the temple and the city just as the tabernacle was the divine centre of the camp in the wilderness. One would gather from the prophetic word that God will work specially in Jerusalem and in Israel, and that the mass of truly converted people will be found there. “Thy people also shall be all righteous they shall possess the land for ever — the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified” (Isaiah 60: 21). “All Israel shall be saved. According as it is written, The Deliverer shall come [p. 212] out of Zion; he shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob” (Romans 11: 26). Israel, and Jerusalem in particular, will be the divine centre of administration on earth, and hence this attack of the rebellious nations.
With the destruction of these nations, and the final judgment of the devil by his being cast into the lake of fire, the history of the present earth ends. Then in verse 11 we come to the last solemn scene in connection with that history — the judgment of the wicked dead. This is outside time, and its issues are eternal. The earth and the heaven flee from the face of Him who sits on the great white throne. The whole order of things as we know it will have gone in fiery destruction, as 2 Peter 3: 10 tells us. The material world will disappear, but the persons who have inhabited that world remain to be judged according to their works.
How little men recognize their responsibility to God! Yet they will carry it with them into eternity. They cannot divest themselves of it. Men may, thank God, find their failure in responsibility met by infinite grace, if they wake up to it now. Their sins may be forgiven, everything blotted out that was against them, and the Spirit given as power to do what is right in God’s sight. But if man’s responsibility is not met by grace it must be given account of in judgment. Those who will stand before the great white throne are those who have not submitted themselves to God’s righteousness when it was made known in the way of grace. They are the unblessed, the unsaved, from Cain downwards, “great and small”; every one is there; and the judgment is according to what is written. The “books” shew that everything has been put on record with method and accuracy. “Another book” is there also — a very different book — “the book of life”. But we read nothing here of the judgment of those whose names are in that book. It is those not found there who are dealt with. The saints who have died will not come into this judgment at all. They will have been raised, and reigning with Christ in glorified bodies for a thousand years, when this judgment takes place. “The first resurrection” is of “blessed and holy” ones, but “the rest of the dead did not live till the thousand years had been completed” (verses 5, 6).
“They were judged each according to their works”. The small as well as the great are there; the sea and death and hades give up the dead which are in them. And the issue of judgment is that “if any one was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire”. The moral characteristics of those whose names are in the book of life are always insisted on. For instance, it is “fellow-labourers” of whom Paul says that their “names are in the book of life” (Philippians 4: 3) — persons engaged in the same kind of works as Paul! It is “he that overcomes” whose name is not blotted out of that book (Revelation 3: 5). It is those who do not wonder at the beast nor worship him who are there (Revelation 13: 8; 17: 8). Sinners are blotted out of that book, as Exodus 32: 32, 33, and Psalm 69: 28 suggest. The thought of a moral character that is pleasing to God always goes along with being found in that book. Persons whose names are in the book of life do not go on with the sinful works for which men are brought into judgment.
These tremendous and eternal realities are dealt with in Holy Scripture in few and simple words.
[p. 214] There is no attempt to make them impressive by enlarging on the terribleness of what is involved. It is worthy of God that it should be so. HE is speaking, and He does not need to emphasize what He says. These weighty words are left with the consciences of men. Not one star-ray of light or hope shines in the long dark night of eternity for those who die in their sins. “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord we persuade men”. Paul had a profound sense of the solemnity of the day of giving account to God. The gospel is marvellous light for men in Christ, but the brighter the light the darker the shadow which it casts. “What shall be the end of those who obey not the glad tidings of God?”
“Death and hades were cast into the lake of fire”. Death is an enemy to be destroyed [annulled] (1 Corinthians 15: 26). This is the end of it; it will never more be active; “death shall not exist any more” in the new earth (Revelation 21: 4). The terrible power which has invaded this world through the sin of man, and which is adverse to all God’s thoughts for man, is seen here as cast into the lake of fire. Then “hades” is cast there also. A place for departed spirits will be no longer needed, for the wicked will be finally in the lake of fire, and the saints will be in glorified bodies with Christ.