Revelation20chapter 20

Revelation 20:1-3

An angel descends with the key of the abyss and a great chain, and the dragon is seized under his full four-title name, the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, so no reader can mistake who is taken. The binding is fourfold and physical in its grammar, laid hold, bound, cast into the pit, shut up and sealed, and its stated purpose is that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years be fulfilled, a totality of restraint hard to square with the present age, in which the same book's own devil deceives the whole world (12:9) and Peter's lion still walks about seeking prey. This site's tradition reads the binding as future and actual, at the Lord's return which chapter 19 has just described; the reading that finds Satan bound now, in the church age, is answered by the seal and the shut door the text itself describes.

Revelation 20:4

Thrones, enthroned judges, and the martyrs of the beast's hour seen alive: they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years, the promise of 2:26 and 3:21 cashed. The thousand years, named six times in six verses as if to forbid overlooking it, is the reign the prophets sketched and the early church expected: Papias who heard John, Justin who called it the belief of the right-minded (Dialogue with Trypho 80-81), Irenaeus (Against Heresies 5.32-36), and Tertullian all read a real reign of the risen saints on this earth, and this site's tradition stands with them. The kingdom prayed for in the Lord's own prayer here visibly comes.

Revelation 20:5-6

This is the first resurrection: The rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished; this is the first resurrection, and the verb ezesan, they lived, must carry the same sense in both halves of one sentence. The amillennial reading, from Augustine's City of God onward, takes the first resurrection as the soul's regeneration and the implied second as the body's rising, two different resurrections inside one word, and that cost is the reading's weakness, stated plainly as the founder directed: Alford's old challenge stands, that if the first resurrection is spiritual and the second bodily in the same sentence, then language has lost its meaning. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, the promise of 2:11 cashed, and they shall be priests of God and of Christ, the Exodus 19:6 calling reaching its reign.

Revelation 20:7-9

The loosing is as deliberate as the binding, and the final rebellion recruits from nations born during the reign: Gog and Magog, Ezekiel 38-39's names taken up for a last muster as numberless as the sand. They compass the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and there is no battle narrative at all, only fire from God out of heaven devouring them, the war over in one verse. The episode is the Bible's last word on the human heart: after a thousand years of visible righteousness, deception still finds tinder, and the exposition lets that verdict stand.

Revelation 20:10

tormented day and night: The devil that deceived them is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, still there after the thousand years, and the three counterfeits end where their rebellion led. Shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever is the text's own duration, eis tous aionas ton aionon, the strongest formula Greek possesses, the same phrase that measures God's own life at 4:9. The exposition teaches the verse at its full strength without relish, as Scripture's sober record of the end of the serpent whose head Genesis 3:15 promised would be crushed.

Revelation 20:11-12

a great white throne: The great white throne clears the stage entirely, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them, creation itself standing aside for its Judge. The dead, small and great, stand before God, and two kinds of record are opened, the books, plural, of works, and another book, which is the book of life, the register the promises of 3:5 and the warning of 13:8 have kept in view since the letters. The judged are judged out of the books according to their works, and the exposition holds the two records together as the text does: works measure the judgment, the book of life decides the destiny.

Revelation 20:13-15

Every custodian of the dead surrenders its charge, the sea, and death and hell, hades, the grave's holding place, so no manner of dying hides anyone from this court. Then death and hades are themselves cast into the lake of fire, the last enemy destroyed as 1 Corinthians 15:26 promised, and this is the second death, the phrase the overcomer was promised immunity from at 2:11. The chapter's final sentence is the Bible's most solemn, whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire, and the exposition leaves it at its full weight, for the whole book was written so that its readers' names would be found there.