Revelation 20

17-21. A great contest ensues, to which the hosts are gathered under the sixth bowl of wrath (16 : 14). But the actual conflict does not occur till after the fall of Babylon, which is under the seventh bowl or vial. This battle is symbolical, not literal. We are never to think of the Lord Jesus Christ as asserting his rightful power on the earth by onsets of cavalry, or the slaughter of wild beasts, princes, and soldiers, amid the screaming of vultures assembled for a ghastly feast. The only sword wielded by the King of kings is the sword of his mouth, and no weapons are seen in the armies from heaven that follow him. His sharp mouth-sword or word suffices to slay the opposing kings and armies—i. e., to subdue and extinguish national opposition to Christ. But that mouth-sword had no effect on the beast and the false prophet; it is not even applied to them. They are cast alive into a “pool which burns with fire and brimstone.” Thus these formidable symbols of evil activity are committed to an element which wholly consumes. In other words, the influences which they represent and impersonate come to such an end that they can never rise or reappear among the sons of men. D. F.

God will have things go on thus in the world till his word shall be fulfilled; the deceived and the deceiver are his. Things therefore must have their course in the church in the wilderness till the mystery of God shall be fulfilled. God will get to himself great glory by permitting the boar, the man of sin and the dragon, to revel in the church of God; for they by setting up and contending for their darkness, and calling it the light, and by setting it against that light which is light in very deed, do not only prove the power of truth where it is, but illustrate it so much the more; for as black sets off white, and darkness light, so error sets off truth. The Church will not give place, for she knows she has the truth; the dragon and his angels, they will not give place, but as beaten back by the power of truth. Therefore there will, there must, there can not but be, a spiritual warfare here, and that until one of the two is destroyed, and its body given to the burning flame. Bun.

We are living, not in the time of the sixth, but in the time of the seventh head of the wild beast; that head which is known by its ten horns; that power which is designated by division, not by concentration; by a plurality, not by a unity, of crowns and thrones on earth. And here we read of the closing scene of the period of that seventh supremacy. It is the last of the empires: there is none to follow it. It is to terminate in that great outbreak of evil which under many different figures appears both in Old Testament and in New Testament prophecy as the sure token of the last end of all. And then upon this last concourse of the powers of evil bursts the full blaze of the divine glory in the person of Jesus Christ, unto conviction, consternation, and final ruin. V.

1. AND I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his land. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, 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. 4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw 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; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on 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. And when the thousand years

8 are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to 9 battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire 10 came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

11. And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and 12 the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written 13 in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every 14 man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is 15 the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

In the very being—the rational and moral being—that God has given us, he has inwoven the future judgment; he has constructed our nature so that it demands this award as its necessary completion. Our daily life is one long prophecy of that day. In the gloomy recollections of age, in the man of crime who struggles in vain to crush a rebuking conscience, in the youth who weeps the bitter fruits of passion, in the very child who runs to hide his conscious fault—in all alike is foreshadowed the terrible decree of universal judgment. For judgment we are born, for judgment we flourish, grow old, and die. Nature herself dares not deny the certainty of retribution; the gospel but confirms her conviction; for, even in regions where the gospel has never sounded, her voice, speaking in all nations, languages, and times, has proclaimed from pole to pole that God shall judge his creature. But revelation alone could tell the circumstances and accessories of this great event; and revelation has abundantly done so. The Judge himself has undrawn the curtain of eternity; he has shown us his own everlasting throne, and the procedures of his court, and the test he shall demand, and the verdict he shall deliver. It is a strange thing thus to read the story of our own hereafter; to hear delivered, with all the minuteness of some history of past events, a scene in which each of us individually must perform his own special part, and that part the most awful and decisive in all eternity. Strange to see one single point in the clouded future thus flashing out amid the impenetrable obscurity of all the rest; and that one the point on which all the rest is ultimately to depend. Strange, indeed; yet stranger still, that it can be contemplated with so little emotion; that men can live admitting its certainty, yet never remembering its approach; that, when once granted to be true, it should not be found to occupy every thought, and to make the great directive principle of existence. W. A. B.

1-3. The doom of the dragon.**—He has been cast out of heaven into the earth (12 : 9). Let that be the first stage of his discomfiture. The second will be when he is bound with a chain and cast into the abyss, there to be confined for a thousand years. Though sin will not be wholly expunged from the earth during that period, the active power of the tempter will be restrained, and the saints will be free from his wiles as well as his fiery darts. 7, 8. But the dragon is to be let loose again, and wickedness will have a brief revival on the earth. Satan will come out of prison incorrigible and incurable as he entered it—the inveterate impersonation of malice and deceit. Terrible fiend! The sight of Eve’s innocence stirred in him no pity. The manifestation of the Son of God brought him to no repentance. A thousand years of restraint in the abyss teach him no submission. He is no sooner at large again than he resumes his old employment of deceiving the nations and assailing the saints. 9, 10. But the cup of his iniquity is full; and he reaches the third and final stage of his discomfiture. The confederacy which he leads against the holy city is scattered by devouring fire from heaven, and then he himself is overtaken by his doom. It is not, as the mediæval notion was (not yet extinct among us), that the devil is to be a king in hell, tormenting at his pleasure lost souls of men, but that he himself is tormented; as hitherto the most active of sinners, hereafter the most helpless; as more wicked than others, so in the end more miserable.

There is a serious difficulty about the second coming of Christ. Many passages in both Testaments connect his advent with the establishment of his kingdom on the earth; and it is taught in the nineteenth chapter of this book that he will be revealed from heaven with attendant saints before the millennium; that he will then subdue his enemies, and introduce a reign of righteousness and peace. There are, however, many other passages, of equal authority, which describe our Lord as coming with flaming fire to judge the world; and the last judgment is certainly after the millennium (vs. 11-15). On this interpreters have broken into parties; and then, as is not uncommon in controversy, each party, occupying itself with the parts of Scripture which favor its distinctive theory, becomes more and more confident in its own opinion. It is not within the power of man to tell us now what may or may not be inclosed within the truth and fact of the Lord’s second coming. Only the future can determine. The prophecy regarding Messiah in the Old Testament seemed to intimate only one advent for all purposes; but we now perceive that it covered a double advent, a coming in weakness, and a coming in power, a coming to suffer, and a coming to reign. There is no reason why the prophecy in the New Testament regarding the second advent may not unfold a double import; the more so that the language touching the resurrection of the dead, though often seeming to point to one event, unfolds a double import, a resurrection of the just, and a subsequent uprising of the unjust.

It is clear that Christ will come to quell his adversaries, reward his servants, and bring in millennial peace; but it is not clear whether or not that appearing will be visible to the world at large. Enough that it will be quite appreciable by his saints. He will interpose in such a way that they who follow him in the great battle of God Almighty will know right well who it is by whom they are led, and to whom the victory is due; and they who reign in life upon or over the earth will know well who it is with whom they reign as kings and priests to God. But this does not exhaust the prophecy of his appearing. At the last day he will come in his glory, seen by every eye, to judge the quick and the dead. Let us endeavor to keep all this truth honestly in mind.

4. The Millennial blessedness.—Whether or no one thousand ordinary solar years are intended, a definite period is fixed, during which the meek shall “inherit the earth,” and the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be “given to the people of the saints of the Most High.” D. F.

Dr. Hodge thus summarizes the generally received views of the future of time: “It is clearly revealed, both in the Old and the New Testaments, that the gospel is to exercise an influence over all branches of the human family, immeasurably more extensive and more thoroughly transforming than any it has ever realized in time past. This end is to be gradually attained through the spiritual presence of Christ in the ordinary dispensations of Providence and ministrations of his Church. The period of this general prevalency of the Gospel will continue a thousand years. Either at the commencement, or during the continuance of this period, the Jews are to be converted to Christianity. At the end, there will be a comparatively short season of apostasy and violent conflict between the kingdoms of light and darkness. Then will follow—Christ’s advent, the general resurrection and judgment: these will be simultaneous; and they will be succeeded by the burning of the old and the revelation of the new earth and heavens.”

Of the Millennium so far as revealed by John, the description is very limited, making only three leading points, viz., the binding of Satan; the duration of this restraint; and the joy of the martyrs with Christ over the glorious event. If we ask for the agencies which are to introduce and produce this millennial age, these visions give no answer beyond what is comprehended in the one fact—Satan bound. If we ask what John has taught us respecting the state of the world during this Millennium, we are left to infer it from these two facts—the withdrawing of Satan’s influence, and the joy of the martyrs and of Jesus over the victory of his cause, the triumph of his reign. We may however turn back to Old Testament prophecy and there find many of the most important questions fully answered. If we ask for the political, moral, and religious state of the world, we learn that wars will cease; crime disappear; that hate will die out of human bosoms and love reign in its stead; the idols will utterly perish; one God only shall be worshiped and obeyed from the rising to the setting sun. If we ask, What agencies are to work this wondrous change? we are promptly answered—“For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord [Jesus] as the waters cover the sea.” Satan deceives no longer; the truth of God in his gospel leads men in the paths of righteousness and peace. These long ages form the grand theatre for manifesting the transforming power of the gospel of salvation—redemption by the cross of Jesus. It is the consummation of the gospel age, in which the inherent power of God’s spirit with his truth, borne in the willing hands and loving hearts of his people, will have free course and be glorified. H. C.

4-6. Nearly all through the Christian centuries there has existed an opinion, gaining at times a wide prevalence, that there is to be a pre-millennial resurrection of the righteous, who shall reign with Christ for a thousand years, while the rest of the dead still slumber on in their graves. In support of this opinion, appeal is made to the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse. But a closer inspection of the chapter might have disclosed the fact that the resurrection here spoken of as preceding the thousand years, is a resurrection not of all the saints, but only of the martyred saints. It would be disingenuous to deny, or try to blink, the difficulties which beset not this passage alone, but the entire book of the Apocalypse. Till the Champollion appears, who shall decipher this mysterious hieroglyph, we can do no better than interpret the passage in question figuratively. Perhaps the meaning of it is, that before the Millennium is ushered in—that “mellow Indian summer of the church on earth”—the spirit of the martyrs must be reproduced throughout the ranks of the redeemed. The martyrs may thus be said to issue from their graves in advance of the general resurrection, to sit regnant with Christ. But whatever may be done with this passage, it will not answer for us to disregard the many other passages which speak of only one resurrection at the end of the world. The New Testament holds up clearly before us one great day, for which all other days are made; the day of final judgment, the day of God, when the Son of Man shall be seen coming in the clouds with the retinue of all his disembodied saints, when the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and all the dead shall live again embodied, in order to the completeness of their being and the fullness of their retribution. R. D. H.

As to the notion of a descent to the earth by Christ and the martyrs and their visible reign here, there is not a word in the text nor even an implication. What a conception it would be, to mingle celestial and terrestrial beings in one common mass? The glorified Saviour and the glorified martyrs, mingling with material and punishable beings, and becoming subject again to the laws of matter? If it be said that the earth is to be changed entirely, at the beginning of the millennium, and to be fitted by this change for the abode of such glorious beings raised from the dead, where then are Gog and Magog to live during this period—and other men—are they still mortal beings or not? Besides all this, John has not yet said a word respecting the renovation of the earth. It is only at or after the period of the general judgment that this renovation takes place, Rev. 21 : 1. M. S.

6. On such the second death has no power.** The Scriptures set before us “death” as manifested in two forms; and Christ as the destroyer of one, the ruler and restrictor of the other. These are mysteriously entitled “the first” and “the second” death; both, as we may infer from the sameness of the name, successive developments, first on a less, afterward on a vaster and more terrible scale, of that common principle, whatever it be, of death, which is the original and stated

“wages of sin.” The first form of death results on the sin of nature, and is therefore universal as it is; the second form, which perhaps is naturally the sequel or maturity of the former, is, by the mercy of God, restricted to unpardoned guilt. To both, Christ, “who is our life,” is the appointed adversary, and over both he triumphs, though in different ways; over the first by raising all mankind, over the second by conducting his faithful to glory. W. A. B.

9. Gog and Magog.** John borrows his imagery from Ezek. 37, 38, and 39. That the names of these enemies will be literally Gog and Magog, and that they are literally to come from the four corners of the earth, and besiege the literal Jerusalem, no one versed in the language of prophecy will contend. Enough that the names of old enemies are employed to designate new ones, as yet without a name. Enough that they come from the bosom of unconverted heathens, and that they oppose and persecute Christians wherever they meet them. These are the things signified; all the rest is costume.

11-15. The opposition of all enemies being thus effectually put down, it follows, of course, that the Church will afterward enjoy undisturbed tranquillity and prosperity. But on this the writer does not dwell. Still the fact that he does not make nothing against the supposition of a long intervening period between the destruction of Gog and Magog and the general judgment. It should be remembered that one leading topic of the book is the subjugation of the enemies of the Church; and that topic is now completed. The writer passes on immediately, therefore, to the final and glorious reward of the righteous, when the probation of all the redeemed is to be completed, and the august drama is brought to its final close. But before the final reward can be distributed, a general judgment is to be instituted, at which all that have been concerned in the Redeemer’s kingdom, either as friends or enemies, are to be present, and to receive their final sentence. The remainder of the chapter is occupied in describing this scene. M. S.

The opening proclamation of the Lord’s coming (1 : 7) notifies also its effect on the world: “Every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.” And these sounds continue. Things do not melt quietly into the peace of the kingdom of God. There is a crash of ruin, and a winepress of the wrath of Almighty God, and a lake that burns with fire and brimstone. And this judgment falls, not only on principles and powers of evil, but on nations of men; and not only on nations, but on separate persons, even on “every one who is not found written in the book of life.” He who does not accept the reality of the world’s rebellion and ruin, and of the wrath and judgment which it brings, must certainly reject this whole book from the canon; and, with it, must tear away large and living portions of every preceding book of Scripture. T. D. B.

It was a visionary representation only of this august scene that the apostle beheld: we shall behold the scene itself, the great reality. And we shall be more than spectators of it, we shall be parties in it. With some things that are written in this mysterious book we may have little or nothing to do; they concern others, but not us: with what is written here we have everything to do. C. B.—Mix ourselves up as we may, let the gradations in the appearances and outer details of character be what they will, the line runs out straight from the great white throne, and you and I and all souls are on the right hand of it, or on the left. F. D. H.

12. The dead, small and great, stand before God.** Of a multitude like this we can not conceive. But here are all the millions of men who have lived and died in all the earth since the earth began, all uprising in one and the same awakening moment, and all brought, by some secret, irresistible impulse, to one and the same spot; gathering together, some willingly, some reluctantly; some joyfully, some despairingly; but yet gathering together all in one vast assembly, before one and the same throne. What a spectacle! a being in the human form calling up, and compelling to stand before him, every one of the human race who has ever breathed; without difficulty, without effort, placing them all passive and powerless at his bar! Well may he say, “Ye shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power.” C. B.

Nations and men have acted freely, and their very caprice and willfulness have been worked, by an overmastering wisdom, into that web whose woof no hand of man has held, and whose web and woof together have made up one grand, consecutive, advancing history. The scroll of time has been slowly unrolled; each nation, each man, has written upon it, as he thought he would, his own brief record, and then it was rolled up, and others came and wrote; and when it is all unrolled and read, we find thereon one epic, the connected history of God and man. H. B. S.

The books opened. By what means soever made known, it is the truth that will come out. None shall be wearied by the tediousness of the trial; leisure enough shall be granted to carry it through. A man’s deeds, in due succession, shall be recounted: and the most succinct and satisfactory method, perhaps, will be for himself to recount them. He may well be trusted to do so; for he feels at every pore that the atmosphere of truth is about him. I. T.

Every man is now, whether he wills it or not, unconsciously writing his own biography; his whole life forming a work of more importance, to himself at least, than any other in the universe—each volume a year, each chapter a month, each day or hour a page. At judgment memory will read the whole, and be compelled to feel that every word is true. It is strange, too, how rapid—reasoning from analogy—such a review may be, without diminishing from its distinctness; states of being, or successive acts which occupied long periods of time, may rapidly be recalled in all their minute features. In moments of sudden peril, when death seemed approaching, how frequently have men told us that they beheld, in a twinkling of an eye, the great features of their whole life, like a panorama, passing before their mind’s eye! And thus at judgment, clear, yet rapid—intensely real and vivid, yet sudden as light—may the life of the boy, and the man, and the patriarch, from the first to the last moment of conscious and responsible existence upon earth, be presented to the mind with a self-evidencing power of truth, which can not, which dare not, be denied or resisted.

The Book of Providence shall be opened. In this book has been recorded, and from its pages can be shown, by Jesus Christ, everything which has been done to us by himself since the hour of our birth till that of our death. Every temporal mercy or spiritual blessing, every advice given by ministers, relations or friends, every Sabbath which dawned upon us, every visitation of sickness or domestic affliction, every item, in short, of that immense sum of things which, in his providence, or by his grace, was given us each successive hour of our life, and which was intended to mold our characters according to the will of God; all shall be revealed at judgment, that the universe may know what Jesus Christ, the King, has really done for each one of his subjects, and what each subject has been, and done, in relation to him.

“Another book will be opened, which is the Book of Life.” In that book are inscribed the characters of all God’s people, and the evidence of the reality of their faith in Christ and obedience to him. Their works, which are the evidence, results, and rewards of faith, are recorded by that same Spirit through whose power alone the soul has lived, believed, and been enabled to bring forth such fruit to the praise of the glory of God by Jesus Christ. In the book of life will be found recorded by the omniscient Holy Spirit of Truth, that secret life of every saint which was “hid with Christ in God.” Then shall be revealed the reality of their repentance and inward renewal of soul; the sincerity of their love to God and his people; their secret prayers, thanksgivings, confessions, intercessions, and holy communion with God; their plans, longings, and sacrifices for the spread of the gospel, and the glory of God upon earth; their deeds of charity for Christ—every prison they entered, every naked one they clothed, the hungry they fed, or the offenses forgiven by them from love to him who forgave them; that whole character, in short, which is the result of union with Christ, will be evidenced to the universe from what is recorded of it in the Lamb’s Book of Life. N. M.

14. The second death.** The true death—the real death—is the death of the soul. It is when the soul is severed from its God, and from hope, and peace, and joy; when it lives without life; survives only to suffer; is cut off from its high destiny, and driven away from him who is the RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. Religion is life, and heaven is life, and hell is existence without life, continued being, where the soul is held in existence only to continue to die. THIS IS DEATH. Hear him speak who saw it all, and who knew it all: “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” There, according to him, the sufferer shall lift up the eyes, “being in torment,” and ask in vain for a single “drop of water” to cool the tongue; there “the worm dieth not, and the fire shall not be quenched”; there shall be “everlasting punishment”; there shall be “outer darkness”; there shall be the execution of the sentence, “Depart, accursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” These are the words of the meek and mild and benevolent Redeemer—the most tender and kind and merciful of all who have dwelt on the earth; who used such expressions as these, “How can ye escape the damnation of hell?” as if they became no other lips but his. In that dread sphere no spirit strives to reclaim the lost. On no zephyr there is the message of mercy borne, whispering peace. No God meets the desponding there with promises and hopes; and from no eye there is the tear of sorrow ever wiped away. There is no such friend as Jesus, no voice of mercy, no day-star of hope, no father, mother, daughter, pastor, angel, to sympathize; no one to breathe for the lost the prayer for pardon; no great Intercessor to bear the cry for mercy up to the throne of God. It is death—lingering, long, interminable death—the dying sorrow prolonged from age to age; outward, onward toward eternity—ever lingering, never ending. A. B.

THE word of prophecy foretold the coming of Messiah to set up a kingdom of saving mercy, according ing to which he did come. By the same word are we assured of his return as Judge of quick and dead. The fact, not the method; not the details, but the grand outlines of this conclusion of history in time are given us. This much only is necessary to its full moral effect upon us. Inquiries, therefore, in the direction of detail, serve rather to belittle than to exalt and define to our view this “spiritual mountain-land” unto which we are come, led by the word of Revelation. The Scriptures affirm that:

1. God hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world. This day is not to be conceived of as a period of twenty-four hours, but rather as one of the days of creation, or as a prophetic day; a period of time long enough for the full and proper consummation of the trial of every man, the bringing of every secret thing into judgment, and the awarding according to righteousness.

2. This day follows immediately upon the general resurrection of all the dead. No words can better set forth this solemn judgment scene than those of our Lord in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew: “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all nations, and he shall separate them as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.” In anticipation of this hour, at the voice of the Son of man, the graves and the sea give up the dead which are in them.

3. Not only will all who have lived upon the earth, without exception, be numbered in that vast assemblage, but also “the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.” So that this judgment scene must be regarded as having relation to the two rival kingdoms in this world now contending for mastery, and yet to grapple in more deadly conflict as the day approaches; the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of Satan.

4. The Judge will be none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. It is most fitting that he, “by whom, and for whom, and to whom are all things,” should judge the world. By his omniscient wisdom and unimpeachable righteousness, by his two-fold nature as divine yet human, by his providence over the race from the beginning, and his headship to his Church, by his matchless love for the world and his redeeming power over it, he is qualified to judge the world in righteousness, according to the deserts and qualifying conditions of every man’s life and character.

5. At that tribunal will every man be impartially tried and judged. Every work will be bring into judgment with every secret thing, the little as well as the great. The great springs from the little, is

made up of littles, hinges on littles. Nothing is unimportant as determining character and desert. The possibility of such a minute disclosure is set forth in the fact that men are to be judged out of the Books. The expression implies, beyond question, that the waves of time have swept nothing into utter oblivion—that it is possible to call up the secret and public life of every man from Adam to the latest born of time, and every moment of it. That which is hid shall yet be made known, that which is covered shall yet be revealed. And this is so searchingly and universally true, that it matters not how successfully guilt has been covered, how long men have ceased to wonder over some deed of wrong, or how many years have been throwing their ever-accumulating events upon it, it shall yet be trumpeted abroad, and the light shall reveal it, when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.