The 1000-Year Restraint of Satan, Satan’s “Little Season” and the Great Tribulation

One thing which is trending currently on social media is reference to what is often referred to as “Satan’s little season”.  However, virtually every single example I have seen is full of bogus information that either involves guesswork or slavishly following some kind of cockamamie eschatological system. I have actually had some laugh-out-loud moments upon reading some of these because they are so outlandish. I shouldn’t laugh really because millions upon millions of people are being deceived.

The actual phrase which references Satan’s little season occurs in the King James Version translation in Revelation 20:3. Here are the first three verses of that chapter in that translation to put it in context:

“And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. 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”.

The words “a little season” are from the Greek, μικρὸν χρόνον, mikron chronon, and they would be translated today as “a little bit of time” or “a little while”. If we want to identify what this “little while” is and when it occurs, we need to break down those verses above in a realistic and faithful manner. So let’s do it!

Firstly, this is a vision. John “saw” something happening. In keeping with the rest of the book, we are dealing here with vivid symbolism. The key, the bottomless pit, and the great chain are symbols; but of what? Plainly they are symbols of restraint. In some mighty way, Satan (who is not a symbol but is real) is envisioned by John as being put under some kind of restraint and that restraint is said to last for one thousand years. It is not a total restraint but is in respect of one thing: That he should not deceive the nations. We really need to come to terms with what this “1000 years” business is all about if we are to grasp what the “little season” after it is all about too. This requires some study. Are you up for it? I hope so because… here goes!…

[Everything which follows below is extracted from my commentary on the Book of Revelation in the part which deals with these verses. I have added bits here and there if I have thought they are needed. But I guarantee that if you read what follows here with an open mind that is determined to get to the truth you will know what that 1000 years and Satan’s “little season” which follows it are all about].

In the introduction to many writings about chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation — especially in those of a more academic orientation — it is very common to see it referred to as “the most difficult chapter to interpret in the whole book”. However, I have to disagree. I have come to believe that it is one of the easiest to understand, provided one makes what are surely the right connections! Without wishing to be presumptuous, when I read this chapter, I feel as if John is saying through it:

“I realise that many of the previous chapters have seemed mysterious and are couched in a multitude of symbols, giving you a bit of a challenge. So, before I embark on the epilogue in chapters 21 and 22 about the new universe which God will create, I am now going to sum up the period of time from Jesus’ ascension to His judgement on the world with a straightforward account that anyone who loves His word and who understands the basics of the Scriptures should grasp without too much problem. But for those who want to turn everything into an agonised academic conundrum, or who approach it with one of those human-made systems of interpretation in mind, this chapter will either bewilder them or send them away with the fairies up the garden path”.

So let’s see how we can make sense of this chapter without taking liberties or forcing the text to conform to the views of any sect.

Establishing the Biblical Pattern by Which to Interpret Chapter 20

I remember the first time I heard about the literal one-thousand-year reign of Christ on earth, known as the “Millennium”, and I thought, “That sounds like baloney to me!” As a relatively new disciple, I had the words of Christ ringing in my head, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). I thought that it just didn’t make any sense whatsoever to be reigning on the earth in its present fallen state. After all, the return of Christ is to bring in the judgement and to inaugurate the new heaven and new earth, not to stick an exact 1,000-year interlude into the proceedings before that.

The more I have studied the Bible, the more that scepticism has been confirmed. I realised that I needed to figure out what this 1000-year period really means, especially in such a symbolic Book. The very best way to do that is by comparing Scripture with Scripture, rather than imposing literalistic Jewish ideas on the text. I also realised that I would have to unhook myself from the influence of what others believe about this text (just as I have done with the rest of the Book of Revelation), as peer pressure is strong concerning these supposedly Endtime scriptures. So this is what I did.

When I started to study the Book of Revelation in a serious manner, I remember thinking how so much of the detail in this chapter 20 precisely matched elements that I had seen in other parts of the Bible. There seemed to be a pattern which connected them. As I saw this pattern increasingly clearly, I realised that it is fundamental to so many aspects of the life of the disciple of Christ — most especially those involving assurance, patience, and encouragement. For this pattern is like understanding ‘the revelation of Jesus Christ for dummies’. That pattern can be summed-up in three bullet-points:

• In the wake of Christ’s ascension, there is a lengthy period of Divine restraint upon Satan and his forces of darkness preventing them from gathering the nations into one confederated, conglomerate, genocidal, Church-destroying, Christ-hating entity, thus enabling the Ekklesia (symbolised as the ‘two witnesses’ in chapter 11) to proclaim the truth about Christ, despite human and demonic evil across the globe incrementally increasing as the end of the age draws near.
• This restraint is followed by a short period during which the restraint will be taken away and Satan will be divinely permitted to achieve his kingdom-building goal through the Antichrist and all the nations controlled by him in a one-world government. This will culminate in one vast global outburst of brutal, murderous persecution of the Ekklesia, which is called in New Testament Scripture both Armageddon and Gog and Magog, and summed up by Jesus as “a time of great tribulation”.
• That short period of demonic mayhem is immediately followed by the Second Coming of Christ, who will bring on the resurrection, judge the world, destroy the Antichrist and Satan, and bring in “The Restoration of All Things” in the new heaven and new earth.

This pattern, which I will elaborate on below, is not some human-made system of eschatology. It is a pattern which is established in Scripture. So, where can this pattern be seen, and how established is it? Firstly, in the second chapter of Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians (which you should now carefully read), he writes about how the “day of the Lord” (the return of Christ) cannot happen until there is first the apostasy and the revealing of the “man of lawlessness” (plainly the Antichrist, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3). This “man of lawlessness” has something which is

“now restraining him, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but the one who now restrains it will continue until he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of His mouth and annihilate by the majesty of His arrival” (2 Thessalonians 2:6-8).

So there is that pattern. The “mystery of lawlessness” which was already at work and operational in Paul’s day — which I believe is commensurate with “the spirit of the Antichrist”, which was also operational in John’s time, “already in the world”, as he said (1 John 4:3), but despite being operational, has been under Divine restraint, and will continue to be so until that restraint is taken out of the way at the end of the age. It is most likely that the restraining power is being carried out by a powerful angel (cf. Revelation 7:1; 9:14). [I will enlarge on why that should be the case when I begin the exposition of our text]. Angels are shown elsewhere in the Book of Revelation to be used as a means of restraint. Timewise, we know it will be at the end of the age, because Paul says in the text above that when the restraint is taken out of the way, “then the lawless one [the Antichrist] will be revealed”. Then, in the same breath, the text says that the Antichrist will be slain and destroyed by the arrival of Christ at His second coming. In other words, the mayhem on earth (after the restraint on the ‘mystery of lawlessness’ is removed) will only be for a comparatively short time (a little season) before the end of this world as we know it at the return of Christ. This is the pattern. There is no intervening “Millennium”. There is the apostasy, the revealing of the Antichrist, which then seems to be quickly followed by the return of Christ and then the judgement. As Paul says elsewhere that the judgement will take place “on the day He comes to be glorified in His saints” (2 Thessalonians 1:10). No intervening “Millennium” involved.

The same pattern can be seen elsewhere. For example, in chapter 17 of the Book of Revelation, we read this:

“The beast that you saw—it was, and now is no more, but is about to come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. And those who dwell on the earth whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world will marvel when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet will be. This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. There are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for only a little while. The beast that was, and now is not, is an eighth king, who belongs to the other seven and is going into destruction” (Revelation 17:8-11).

So there is the beast which “was not” in John’s time (and also now in ours) and is going to come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The ultimate manifestation of the beast is the Antichrist, as is the seventh king in that prophecy. Then it says that when that seventh king does come (who we identified as the Antichrist) “he must remain for only a little while”. This is the pattern. That Satan and the beast-system which he empowers will be under restraint throughout the Age of the Ekklesia (which corresponds to the “was not”); then the restraint will be taken out of the way and the Antichrist (Satan’s man on earth) will be revealed and for a short time will have his way and do whatever he wishes, including the terrible persecution of the people of God; then he will ‘go to destruction’. This is the biblical pattern.

Another text impinging on this can be seen in chapter 11 of the Book of Revelation, “when the two witnesses have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will wage war with them, and will overpower and kill them” (Revelation 11:7). We have already established in an earlier chapter that the two witnesses are symbolic of the testimony of the Ekklesia throughout the Age of the Ekklesia, the Gospel Age. So we see here that when that testimony is finished, the beast — all the power of satanic evil — is removed from restraint in the Abyss (which I will explain further below), runs rampant without the former restraint and immediately begins a genocidal war against the Ekklesia. Remember that the restraint on Satan has been in place throughout this age in order to allow the Gospel to flourish relatively unimpeded and to prevent the Ekklesia from being overcome by a rampant demonic realm under a global edict of persecution by all the nations under the Antichrist. This, again, is the pattern to which I am referring.

Again, in Revelation 12, we read that in the wake of the ascension of Christ (verse 5b), the Ekklesia is protected from Satan’s harmful grasp, for “God had prepared a place for her to be nourished for 1,260 days” (verse 6), and

“when the dragon saw that he had been thrown to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle to fly from the presence of the serpent to her place in the wilderness, where she was nourished for a time, and times, and half a time” (verse 13-14).

We have already established earlier that “1,260 days”, “3½ years”, and “time, times and half a time” are symbols in the Book of Revelation which refer to the same period as the Age of the Ekklesia. So we see here that the Ekklesia is being kept away from destruction by demonic forces during the age of its testimony. We can reasonably link that in with the ‘restraining order’ on Satan. That is what keeps the Ekklesia relatively safe in the Age of the Ekklesia. This is the pattern. The reason that I am establishing this pattern so firmly from so many different places in Scripture is so that we will see it clearly in our text in chapter 20. We will then not be using a human-made system of thinking to try and find that system in the text, as frequently happens. But we are using what is already established in Scripture to interpret Scripture, thus making the interpretation inescapable. This is good hermeneutics.

So now we have established the pattern, which occurs a number of times in key Scripture texts. It is both a teaching for the whole age and also eschatological at the same time. Let me reiterate that pattern in full to remind us:

• In the wake of Christ’s ascension, there is a lengthy period of Divine restraint upon Satan and his forces of darkness preventing them from gathering the nations into one confederated, conglomerate, genocidal, Church-destroying, Christ-hating entity, thus enabling the Ekklesia (symbolised as the ‘two witnesses’ in chapter 11) to proclaim the truth about Christ, despite human and demonic evil across the globe incrementally increasing as the end of the age draws near.
• This restraint is followed by a short period during which the restraint will be taken away and Satan will be divinely permitted to achieve his kingdom-building goal through the Antichrist and all the nations controlled by him in a one-world government. This will culminate in one vast global outburst of brutal, murderous persecution of the Ekklesia, which is called in New Testament Scripture both Armageddon and Gog and Magog.
• That short period of demonic mayhem is immediately followed by the Second Coming of Christ, who will bring on the resurrection, judge the world, destroy the Antichrist and Satan, and bring in “The Restoration of All Things” in the new heaven and new earth.

That gathering together of all the nations to carry out a brutal, murderous persecution of the Ekklesia, while plainly being stated in chapter 11, verse 7 (as we saw above), is also more than hinted at symbolically in chapter 16, verse 16: “They assembled the kings in the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon” and in chapter 19, verse 19: “Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies assembled to wage war against the One seated on the horse, and against His army”. That is the pattern. We can see it over and over again. Bear in mind that Armageddon and its equivalent in Gog and Magog, are not battles between actual physical armies in geographical locations in Israel. These are symbols in a symbol-laden Book concerning the final spiritual warfare waged against the Ekklesia, resulting in terrible acts of cruelty and assassination/execution — as if those can actually stifle truth!

Having established that pattern — the restraining of Satan after the ascension of Christ, the resultant flourishing of the Gospel, the prevention (delay) of Satan from bringing a global government under a single world leader to pass, the loosing of the restraint of Satan and his demonic realm, the revealing of the Antichrist and his brief but barbarous time of rule — we are now in a position to receive an exposition of our text in chapter 20. Now we will not be confused by this supposedly “most difficult of all chapters”. For our text simply reiterates this pattern that we see clearly in other scriptures and repeatedly in the Book of Revelation itself. This is not a human-made system of thinking being applied, but the already-established witness of Scripture. Let us now go into this with relish.

The Restraining of Satan for a Thousand Years (20:1-3)

“Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key to the Abyss, holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he threw him into the Abyss, shut it, and sealed it over him, so that he could not deceive the nations until the thousand years were complete. After that, he must be released for a brief period of time”.

The first thing that we notice here is that it is an angel who enforces the ‘restraining order’ against Satan. We have already established that Satan is restrained during the Age of the Ekklesia until whatever is doing the restraining is “taken out of the way”, as we saw above when we examined the text in Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2. I said there that the restraining power is most likely angelic. Surely, here we have the confirmation of that. This is the very restraint about which Paul is speaking in his letter. One text explains the other. That is how Bible hermeneutics works.

Now, we also see that this restraint concerns one particular activity: “so that he could not deceive the nations”, as it says in verse 3. (I will come to the “thousand years” further below). And if we look further along in our text, we will see that it is not merely about “deceiving the nations” in general (for Satan has plainly been able to do that throughout the entire age in various ways), but to specifically deceive them through being able to “assemble them for battle in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog” (as it says in verses 7-8).

In other words, Satan has been restrained from being able to bring all the nations together from the whole world (symbolised in the phrase, “the four corners of the earth”) into one conglomerate, genocidal, Church-destroying, Christ-hating entity. We know this because verse 9 says that these nations eventually “marched across the broad expanse of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city”. This is clearly symbolic of the global assault on the Ekklesia, just as it says in our ‘pattern’. It makes no sense whatsoever to claim that this refers to Satan turning on the Jews and on the earthly city of Jerusalem. The Ekklesia is the new Jerusalem! Unless we grasp that (which so many do not) we will become lost in all sorts of Jewish nonsense and judaising, as we see everywhere today. I will go into this much more deeply further below when I come to those later verses in the chapter.

I am just establishing here that the restraining of Satan for the Age of the Ekklesia, the Gospel Age, and then being let loose for a short time — during which he forms a global government, brings on the Antichrist, and then horribly persecutes the Ekklesia — is the already established reality from other Bible texts and can thus reasonably be applied to these verses in chapter 20 rather than having to invent a spurious 1000-year kingdom of Christ on earth. So, let us open up these first verses even more.

We are clearly dealing with symbols in these early verses in our text. The Abyss is a symbol. Right? The key is a symbol. Right? The dragon and serpent are symbols. Right? The chain is a symbol. Right? So why do so many want to force the thousand years to be the only literal aspect of the verse? That is the searching question. In the context of the Book of Revelation, on one level “a thousand” means a lengthy indeterminate number known only to God. On another level it is three cubed, 10 x 10 x 10. The number 10 depicts government on earth in its human aspect…. Its completeness. If we already know from other texts that Satan will be restrained throughout the Age of the Ekklesia, then it would be reasonable to interpret Satan here being said to be “chained up” for one thousand years as symbolic of that age-long restraint. Let’s go into the subject of the Abyss and Satan’s “one thousand years” in it.

When, and for What Period, is Satan Restrained?

That one thousand years is about the absolute completeness and finitude of the whole of the Age of the Ekklesia, from the ascension of Christ until the revealing of the Antichrist. You see, my friends, there is a context to this chaining-up of Satan for that period of time in history and it is not merely in the future. Let’s chase this down. The Lord Jesus said to the Pharisees, in the context of casting out demons: “How can anyone enter a strong man’s house and steal his possessions, unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can plunder his house” (Matthew 12:29). Think about this carefully. Christ is plainly referring there to His own ministry and what would happen as a result of His victory on the cross. He was going to tie-up Satan (i.e. put him under a serious restraint) and then plunder his house and goods. What does that mean? Prior to that time, with a few individual exceptions, the nations had been in complete bondage to Satan. But in the wake of Christ’s victory on the Cross over the powers of darkness, there would be a release from that bondage — and instead Satan would be bound, put under restraint — so that it would be possible for people from the nations in general to be brought into the kingdom of God in large quantity, rather than only the occasional trickle that it had been in the Old Testament era.

So many fail to understand the full supernatural significance of this, which is an astonishing change from Old Testament times, where comparatively few people out of the Gentile nations came to the Light of God which would one day be revealed in the Christ. As is clear from the whole context (Matthew 12:22-29), the Lord Jesus was here describing the victorious aim of His earthly mission, which was set in motion at the scene of the Temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13), consolidated through the mission work of Jesus and the disciples, and finally fulfilled at Calvary.

In Jerusalem, shortly before His arrest, Jesus predicted His death on the cross and said, “But for this purpose I came to this hour” (John 12:27). To what purpose was He referring? Four verses later He tells us: “Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out” (John 12:31). The term “cast out” is most appropriate. In the same way that Jesus “cast out” demons from individual people during His earthly walk, so He also banished the Prince of Demons from his then-current sphere of activity as the “ruler of this world”, lording it over the Gentile nations. From the moment that Jesus’ mission on earth was fulfilled, Satan ‘legally’ ceased to be its permitted ruler. The end of the last Gospel record is the final time that he is referred to as such (John 14:30). Throughout the rest of the New Testament, Satan is never once referred to as being “the ruler of this world”; instead, he assumes the title of “ruler of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2), having been cast out of heaven in the wake of the Cross (Revelation 12:10).

We see here that Christ came to tie-up, bind, chain the “strong man” (Satan) so that his house or his domain (that is, the Gentile nations) would be well and truly plundered, and souls within those nations would begin to be delivered from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God. After the cross, the resurrection and the ascension, spiritual supremacy over the planet was now openly established as being in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. One day, the full number of those coming into the kingdom will be complete. Until that time, there will be a necessary “delay” which must happen in the “mystery of God”, during which we must exercise great spiritual patience. We spoke about this “delay” in §6 of chapter 5 above, when dealing with certain verses of chapter 10 in the Book of Revelation. If I may remind you of that text:

“Then the angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land lifted up his right hand to heaven. And he swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and everything in it, the earth and everything in it, and the sea and everything in it: ‘There will be no more delay! But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be fulfilled, just as He proclaimed to His servants the prophets’” Revelation 10:5-7).

The “delay” being spoken of there is surely this symbolic period of “a thousand years”, the Age of the Ekklesia. Now that we have established the basic framework by which to understand this 20^th chapter of the Book of Revelation, we can start to open up our text.

Satan Thrown into “the Abyss” for a Thousand Years (20:1-3)

As already shown above, the first three verses of this chapter depict the restraining of Satan throughout the Age of the Ekklesia, symbolised in the one thousand years. It is specifically stated from what he is being restrained in verses 7-9:

“When the thousand years are complete, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—to assemble them for battle. Their number is like the sand of the seashore. And they marched across the broad expanse of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city”.

The very moment that the restraint is removed, he begins to foment (via the Antichrist) the bringing of the nations together into a global conglomerate or confederation in order to overcome the Ekklesia, for that is what is meant by “the camp of the saints” and “the beloved city”. But what about this Abyss into which Satan is said to be cast, as mentioned in verse 3 of our text? What is the significance of this “bottomless pit”, as it has sometimes been translated?

Identifying the Abyss

We have already touched on this in an earlier chapter, but we must develop it again here in relation to this context. The use of this word, Abyss, is not a description of an actual geographical location (though in ancient times it was naively believed to be under the earth!), but in the Bible it is a symbol for any severe restraint or restriction on either Satan or his fellow fallen angels (demons).

This is the context when one gang of demons that had possessed a man who hung out in a cemetery “kept begging Jesus not to order them to go into the Abyss” (Luke 8:31). The Abyss is plainly a symbol for demonic restraint. Most of the demons (fallen angels) who carry on their dastardly business on earth are not spoken of as being in the Abyss. But a certain class of demon has been consigned in that way in relation to their ability to torment human beings. These are especially debauched and have been consigned to an extra level of restraint. The utter evil of demons in general, their amoral and unscrupulous mindset, is beyond the comprehension of most people in this world; and that is just the everyday demons. Some are so heinous and contemptible that they need to be kept under even more restraint than the regular variety, as we spoke about in an earlier chapter. Thus, they are spoken of as being kept under restraint in the symbolic “Abyss”.

This terrible class of demon is referred to in a couple of places in the Bible. Peter spoke of them when he wrote: “God did not spare angels who sinned, but having cast them down to Tartarus, in chains of gloomy darkness, delivered them to be kept for judgment” (2 Peter 2:4). This was written in the context of the rescue of Lot from rapacious homosexuals in Sodom and Gomorrah and the flood in Noah’s time. It seems clear that the angels being referred to there are the incubi who materialised and had sexual relations with women in Noah’s time who then gave birth to cruel and predatory mutant beings known as the Nephilim (Genesis 6:4). These were also referred to by Jude in his letter with these words: “The angels who did not stay within their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling—these He has kept in eternal chains under darkness, bound for judgment on that great day” (Jude 1:6). Again, Jude speaks of this in the context of “Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, who indulged in sexual immorality and pursued strange flesh, are on display as an example of those who sustain the punishment of eternal fire”.

Towards the end of this age, a number of such terrible demons appear to be released from their restraint in fulfilment of God’s judgement on the world (Revelation 9:1-11). There in that chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation, we see that Satan is actually referred to as the “king of the Abyss” (verse 11). Christ is King of the Cosmos. But being ‘king’ of the Abyss is the best that Satan can do. By permission, he will activate those demons who are currently reserved in the Abyss, so that they do terrible damage on earth at some time in the future, towards the end of the age — although it is plain from the context that the saints will still be alive on the earth, but not subject to the torment of these demons.

However, here in our text in chapter 20, we see that Satan has also been put under restraint, though obviously not in all ways possible. He has been consigned to the symbolic Abyss solely in relation to being able to gather the nations together through deception and incite them into that murderous, Christ-hating, Ekklesia-destroying entity which is implied under the symbol of Armageddon.

Clearly, Satan is highly active in all other human affairs — and especially in those of the church. Let’s face it, as the Scripture says, he still “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). But to just leave it at that would not be doing justice to those Scripture texts which reveal that Satan has also been restrained in certain ways so that the Gospel can be spread. Let’s go into this in a little more detail, for it has a great bearing on our understanding of the “one thousand years” in our text in chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation.

The Restraining of Satan in Order to Facilitate the Spread of the Gospel

Until the cross, Satan clearly had access to the throne of God (Job 1:6‑12; 2:1-7), and fulfilled the role of the ‘accuser’ (Zechariah 3:1-2). However, after the ascension of the Christ, Satan was cast out of heaven (Revelation 12:10), while Christ continued His work as the ‘one intermediary between God and men’ (1 Timothy 2:5), interceding on behalf of His people, thus eliminating Satan’s accusatory role (Romans 8:33-34, 38-39). This victory of Christ over Satan was not a partial, incomplete affair — it was final and absolute. As Paul puts it, “Having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15). The world-system had indeed been under the usurped rulership of Satan for a lengthy period of time, but Jesus overcame this “world” through His experience on the cross (John 16:33). As a result, He could comfort His disciples after the Resurrection with the assurance that “all authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18). After that, no authority remained to Satan whatsoever.

The far-reaching cosmic significance of this mighty victory cannot be over-emphasised. It had been anticipated by Jesus when, after the return of the seventy disciples from a successful mission, in which even the demons were subject to His authority, He said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:17-18). This complete authority of Jesus over the demonic realm in the wake of His death, resurrection and ascension, was prophesied by David when he said, “You have ascended on high, You have led captives away” (Psalm 68:18;  cf. Ephesians 4:7-10). From this point on, the whole of the created order was disturbed as Christ’s great victory set in motion the ‘antidote’ to the pervasive effects of the Fall which was both prospective and retrospective. The satanic realm was then “cast down to the earth” from heaven (Revelation 12:7-9), exactly as Christ had foreseen and foretold (Luke 10:18; cf. John 12:31).

Although the evil effects of the Fall are still very much with us throughout the Age of the Ekklesia, the powers of the satanic realm and its ability to influence human affairs in the wake of Christ’s absolute victory have been greatly transformed , i.e., reduced. (This is why the occult came to exert so much influence throughout this age. Satan, unable to deceive the nations into an all-out global government pogrom against the church, has had to work in smaller ways in secret, undermining and deceiving). This is the context of the tying-up of Satan with the “great chain” in verse 1 of our text. It is the effect of the ascension, which essentially ‘gelded’ Satan’s powers, neutering him in many ways, and placing (revealing) him in his true position as a mere puppet of God to serve His mighty purposes. The tying-up of Him that is in our text here in chapter 20 is a part of that Divine puppetry.

The final part of verse 3 in our text says that after the thousand years are complete, Satan “must be released for a brief period of time” (KJV: “a little season”). This corresponds exactly with a number of other places in the Book of Revelation which also speak of this “short time” or “brief period” of satanic mayhem to come. In chapter 11, verse 11, the period of time in which the forces of darkness could overcome the Ekklesia in a pogrom is styled as “three and a half days”, a symbolic time-length indicating brief duration (a little season). In chapter 17, verse 10, the Antichrist is prophesied only to “remain for a brief time” (a little season). Likewise, the implication in Paul’s text about the “man of lawlessness” is that when he has been revealed, soon after this (so he is only around for a little season) the “Lord Jesus will slay [him] with the breath of His mouth and annihilate by the majesty of His arrival” (2 Thessalonians 2:8). Jesus Himself said He would shorten this terrible Endtime of persecution for God’s people (so that it is a little season rather than a big one!):

“For at that time there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, and never to be seen again. If those days had not been cut short, nobody would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short” (Matthew 24:21-22).

Thus, I believe that there is ample evidence to support this ‘thousand years’ in the Book of Revelation, chapter 20, as being the lengthy and indeterminate duration of the Age of the Ekklesia, from the ascension of Christ to the revealing of the Antichrist, during which time Satan is restrained from being able to deceive the nations into creating his desired “Babel 2.0” (when a confederation of nations will come together as a manifestation of beast-government). Then, after that period of restraint is over, there will be the “brief period of time” in which Satan will do battle against the saints through the nations under the Antichrist that he will have gathered together through deception.

So, in the first three verses of our text in chapter 20, in the wake of Christ’s ascension, a restraining angel is appointed to prevent Satan from being able to create a murderous, Christ-hating, Ekklesia-destroying entity by gathering all the nations into one global conglomerated one-world government, throughout the Age of the Ekklesia, which is symbolised by the term “one thousand years”. Yet, many take these one thousand years absolutely literally and posit a reign of Christ on the earth as it is presently constituted for precisely one thousand years. Nowhere in Scripture is there postulated a one-thousand-year kingdom of Christ on earth, or anywhere else for that matter. However, there is ample evidence elsewhere in Scripture that Satan has been restrained throughout the Age of the Ekklesia until the revealing of the Antichrist. Therefore, this is the plain meaning of Satan being “bound”, restrained, for a thousand years. It is a symbolic expression which a vast amount of professing Christians have twisted into a hideous caricature which takes the edge off the judgement at the end of this age and turns the clock back to Old Testament times. This is a prevalent Judaising tendency which we need to understand. So let us now open it up a little.

The Difference Between Old Testament Materialism and New Testament Spirituality

Before going any further, I believe it is important to explain a little about why the false idea of a literal one-thousand-year kingdom of Christ on earth should have arisen in the first place. Primarily and historically, this has come about through misplaced Old Testament thinking. Back then, the big problem was that the Jews as a whole understood the kingdom of God solely in terms of material prosperity — an earthly kingdom. It is that erroneous way of thinking which has continued to this very day in various mutant forms.

Though they had Jesus’ interpretation of the prophecy of Malachi (Matthew 11:10, 13-14; cf. Malachi 3:1; 4:5), the disciples could still ignorantly ask on the eve of His ascension, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) This question demonstrates the complete failure of the disciples to discern spiritually — to understand spiritual symbolism and see the movement of the Lord’s great plan of salvation. They still didn’t comprehend that the movement in God’s great plan of salvation — the movement across space, time and history — has always been from the earthly to the spiritual. If one doesn’t grasp this concept properly, there will be all sorts of muddled thinking in one’s Bible hermeneutics.

In fact, it was precisely this ability or inability to distinguish the earthly from the spiritual — the literal from the symbolic — which marked the difference between the nominal Israelite and the true person of God in the Old Testament. Let me give you some examples. First, here is the perceptive observation from the faithful believer, David:

“For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart — these, O God, You will not despise” (Psalm 51:16-17).

The faithful believer in the Old Testament era knew very well that earthly sacrifices were merely a necessary symbol for something far deeper. This was the great secret understanding of the heart in the Old Testament saint with true faith. He knew that all the blood and gore were a reminder of the consequences of sin and the need for atonement (Leviticus 4:35; 5:10; Hebrews 9:22), and that it all pointed toward ‘that something which is far deeper’. He heard the words of the Lord ringing in his head: “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). When Saul tried to plead with Samuel that “the troops took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of the things devoted to destruction, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal”, Samuel replied:

“Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obedience to His voice? Behold, obedience is better than sacrifice, and attentiveness is better than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:21-22).

Precisely! In Saul and Samuel (just as it was with Saul and David) we have a classic contrast between the faithless Israelite and the true saint of God. The faithless Israelite was always absorbed by the outward form of things — the material appearance — rather than the spiritual reality which lay behind it. The faithless Israelite was always satisfied by going through the motions of a ritual rather than grasping the spirit for which that ritual stood as a mere symbol.

Judas Iscariot, in common with many other Jews of his day, is reputed to have been a Zealot who expected Christ to be a revolutionary leader who he was hoping (along with many other Jewish people at the time) would lead an armed insurrection against the Roman oppressors (just like the Jewish Judas Maccabeus of the Maccabees who rose up in the 2^nd century BC against the Greek king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, an archetype of the Antichrist to come). When Christ turned out to be advocating a spiritual kingdom rather than an earthly one, Judas presumably got disillusioned and then betrayed Jesus to the authorities.

In the Old Testament era, the great separating factor between the faithless Israelites (mostly the majority) and the saints of God (usually a comparatively small ‘remnant’) was this ability to see beyond the earthly symbol right into the heart of the spiritual reality. We saw this earlier (in §8 of chapter 6) in relation to the way that the Tefillin, those small boxes containing Hebrew scrolls from the Torah (also known as phylacteries) have been developed over the centuries. [The New Bible Dictionary states that phylacteries “were a late innovation brought in by the Hasidaeans, being intended as a counterblast to increasing Hellenistic influence… Their use became universal before the end of the 2nd century AD”]. This was plainly the symbolic expression of a spiritual idea meaning for us to hold His words in our minds(symbolised as “bind them on your foreheads”) and express them in our deeds (symbolised as “reminders on your hands”). But this has been literalised into actual boxes containing the words of God having to be physically bound on heads and hands. The Lord Jesus strongly condemned the Pharisees not only for wearing them but for making them extra-large in order to be seen by everyone and admired (Matthew 23:5). Again, there is a failure to distinguish between the physical symbol and the spiritual reality. Spiritual people (true followers of God) could never feel satisfied with merely having a box on their heads or hands, whereas the literalist-materialist who loves to follow outward rituals by rote will find it immensely satisfying to have gone through the motions in that way, regardless of what is really held dear in the mind and heart.

This symbolism behind the physical/literal was not only the case with all the Levitical rituals and sacrifices — which of course pointed to the saving grace of Christ, the Messiah to come — but was also the case with the very land itself. The land of Israel — the hallowed אֶרֶץ, eretz, which held such a high importance for the Israelite — was only ever an earthly symbol of something far deeper, much more spiritual and infinitely longer lasting. For as the sacrifices and ordinances of the Levitical code pointed symbolically to Christ and His work on the Cross, so the geographical land pointed symbolically to an eternal heavenly country where the faithful really belong. This was the great secret understood by all the faithful ones in the Old Testament:

“All these people died in faith, without having received the things they were promised. However, they saw them and welcomed them from afar. And they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. Now those who say such things show that they are seeking a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them” (Hebrews 11:13-16).

A major hallmark of faith in Old Testament times was having a feeling that you were a “stranger and exile” in the earthly geographical land — that somehow there was something far deeper which lay beyond the mere symbol of the earth; something spiritual. As Paul said:

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself, will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:20-21).

This was well understood by the ever-present ‘remnant’ of faithful ones in Old Testament times. As David put it:

“But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? For everything comes from You, and from Your own hand we have given to You. For we are foreigners and strangers in Your presence, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope” (1 Chronicles 29:14-15).

Now that is the prayer of the true faithful one in Old Testament times. “Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope”. The expectation of the unfaithful Israelite was always totally rooted in the physical earth and in material blessings. He or she could not see beyond the symbol to the spiritual reality. So, for him or her, the Messiah must be an earthly warrior king like Saul (who would relish the idea), or David (who would be horrified at it), and the kingdom would have to be an earthly territory — physical Israel on a map; and any idea of “restoration” would only involve that mappable geographical territory.

But as that prayer of David shows, just to have the geographical land was to be hopeless. “Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope”. Just to have an earthly king was hopeless. Just to have ritual sacrifices was hopeless. Just to have the physical land was hopeless. All those things were hopeless unless there lay a deeper spiritual reality behind them and towards which they pointed and in which they would one day find their fulfilment. And indeed, there was and indeed they did! But the big problem today — and one which is little understood — is that this inadequate and unspiritual mindset and the resultant expectations of the faithless Israelite have been allowed to determine the eschatological expectations of the Church! Please read that last sentence again in order to wholly absorb its shocking nature.

In spite of the fact that we are told: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…” (Hebrews 12:22), and that there is a worldwide undivided Ekklesia made up of believing Jews and Gentiles whereby God has created “in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace and reconciling both of them to God in one body through the cross, by which He extinguished their hostility” (Ephesians 2:15-16), many people are still looking for the reinstatement of Old Testament sacrifices in the temple of a restored Jewish kingdom on the Old Testament land of Israel, with Gentile converts as second-class citizens, an afterthought, a parenthesis, God’s “Plan B”, grafted into the people of God as a kind of second-rate sideshow.

Instead of looking — as the apostle Peter was — for the Day of the Lord coming “like a thief”, in which “the heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and its works will be laid bare…” (2 Peter 3:10), people are faithlessly looking for a secret so-called “Rapture” and a one-thousand-year earthly kingdom with Christ reigning from Jerusalem sometime after that, with temple sacrifices restored (as some claim). What a ridiculous and childish travesty this is! As Jesus said to the woman at the well,

“a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. But a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such as these to worship Him” (John 4:21-23).

Jesus lays out the movement of salvation history here. Salvation originally came through Israel in Old Testament times. That is what He meant by salvation being from the Jews. That was then. He then quickly affirms that the time was coming and actually had come when the earthly city of Jerusalem and its temple (and the old temple at Gerizim, “this mountain” in the text) would no longer be where one had to come to worship God, as it had been in symbolic times. In fact, the mighty emphasis of this would occur some four decades later when Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed in AD 70. Jesus could not have made it clearer that the Old Testament system involving symbolic earthly elements was coming to an end and giving way to the spiritual. That was precisely the purpose behind the destruction of earthly Jerusalem and the temple! It is the failure to grasp this which has resulted in so many who claim to be Christians imagining that Christ will return and set up a precisely 1,000-year reign on earth with its headquarters in Jerusalem. That is all just so passé and prophetically outdated!

Instead of looking for the restoration of all things for all time, as the Bible intended it to be understood, people who are stuck in the old Judaist materialistic viewpoint are merely looking for the restoration of an Israeli kingdom based in Jerusalem for a mere one thousand years. Furthermore, so many who take the thousand years literally now also believe that the modern nation of Israel is a manifestation of the Israel of the Old Testament, when it is really an impostor and counterfeit which has established itself through politicking and terrorism. Talk about selling the Church short! [You can read about all this in much more detail in my book, “Abraham our Father – Jerusalem our Mother: A Biblical Analysis of Judaism and the Modern State of Israel in Relation to the Church of Jesus Christ”, which is available at this link: https://diakrisis-project.com/2022/12/06/new-entirely-updated-120-page-ebook-abraham-our-father-jerusalem-our-mother/ ].

To put it bluntly, we have been seduced by myths and fables based on a grossly distorted literalistic approach to the Bible. Those myths and fables have now become so normative for so many of those who profess faith in Christ that when they hear otherwise, they accuse us of false teaching and even ‘antisemitism’ because we do not want to submit to their outmoded Jewish timetable! Well, the time has come to turn the tables (pun intended).

In Old Testament times the Lord spoke in ‘baby-talk’ to His people. That’s what all the types and shadows were. Baby-talk. But eventually that child comes of age and is old enough to be spoken to in more adult language, with everything more plainly spelled out. The faithful believer in the Old Testament era found these ‘lisped’ words from the Lord to be inadequate to his or her spiritual aspirations and he or she craved something more profound — more fulfilling — more spiritually mature. Quite simply, they outgrew mere literalism and saw through to the spiritual reality to which the symbolism pointed. And so should we!

We, too, need to jettison this slavish literalism and treat the words of the Lord with the full respect that they deserve. It is insulting to the mind of God to dilute His perfect symbolism into such pedestrian prose now that we have come of age and have put off childish things. It is in this area that the Lord Jesus had to set the Pharisees straight. Whereas those faithless Jews were waiting for an earthly liberator warrior-king to rise up against the occupying Roman Empire and restore national Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed the real restoration work as beginning in the ministry of John the Baptist, who fulfilled the Elijah prophecy in the Book of Malachi (Malachi 4:5; cf. Matthew 17:11; Mark 9:12). In doing so, He completely reinterpreted the Messianic concept which had become so distorted among the Jews of the time.

But that same distortion has not only been reintroduced today, but it has also more or less become a touchstone of faith for a vast number of professing Christians, maybe even the majority. Falsehood — in terms of taking a backward step into the view of the faithless Israelite — has virtually established itself as the truth by stealth and by coercion among evangelical Christians. These erroneous ideas about Israel and the kingdom represent a potential step towards apostasy, a falling away from truth into falsehoods which can only lead one down other blind avenues, which will prove to be especially perplexing when the expected mythical world developments (the so-called “Rapture” and the alleged thousand-year reign of Christ on earth) do not pan out as expected by the literalist brigade. I hope that we will grasp the enormity of all this, and the inevitable implications, by the conclusion of this chapter.

Some of the Realities of that “Thousand Years” (20:4-6)

We will now turn to the next three verses in our text in chapter 20, verses 4-6, where some realities of the ‘thousand years’ are presented to us:

“Then I saw the thrones, and those seated on them had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast or its image, and had not received its mark on their foreheads or hands. And they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come back to life until the thousand years were complete. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection! The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and will reign with Him for a thousand years”.

Having shown that the one thousand years in this chapter must surely be a symbol of the Age of the Ekklesia, we are now given some additional staggering information of a spiritual nature. For John then sees people who had not only been “given authority to judge” but they had thrones and reigned with Christ throughout that ‘thousand years’ — that is, as we have shown, throughout the Age of the Ekklesia, the Gospel Age. He even names the qualifications for the people who participate in that reigning: There are those who had already been martyred for their witness about Christ, and those who had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or hands. We have already demonstrated in an earlier section of this book that not receiving the ‘mark of the beast’ means not giving allegiance to the satanic world-system and, ultimately, the Antichrist, and Satan, and not performing any deeds which would aid it, which in turn means being a faithful disciple of Christ.

What we are being shown in verses 4-6 is that — regardless of whether or not disciples of Christ are martyred for the faith — they will reign with Christ, so long as they have separated themselves from, and have no allegiance towards, the satanic world-system (as portrayed symbolically by its enforcer, ‘the beast’). We are being shown here the fundamental nature of a little-known or, at least, extremely under-appreciated aspect of being disciples of Christ. Namely, that they reign with Christ even here on earth during the Age of the Ekklesia right now. Comprehending this for real puts a whole new perspective on one’s status as a disciple and should put goosebumps on one’s flesh.

One does not have to wait for a future mythical earthly ‘millennium’ in order to reign with Christ. This reign of the saints has already been flagged in two earlier texts in the Book of Revelation. “To Him who loves us and has released us from our sins by His blood, who has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father—to Him be the glory and power forever and ever! Amen” (Revelation 1:6). Then, in the song from the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders:

“Worthy are You to take the scroll and open its seals, because You were slain, and by Your blood You purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign upon the earth” (Revelation 5:9-10).

That seems clear enough. Furthermore, the saints are also spoken of as having a crown (Revelation 3:11). This is no small thing. Reigning with Christ the King on earth, along with those who have already passed into glory, goes hand in hand with being priests, as you can see in the two texts above, as well as in our text, “and they will be priests of God and of Christ, and will reign with Him for a thousand years” (verse 6). Peter even joins the two things together into one phrase when he writes:

“You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

A “royal priesthood”. Do you get it? As Paul also told the young pastor Timothy: “This is a trustworthy saying: If we died with Him, we will also live with Him; if we endure, we will also reign with Him” (2 Timothy 2:11-12). Of course, the awful parallel reality in the next words to Timothy is that “If we deny Him, He also will deny us”. But reigning with Christ really is our destiny — not just after our death but, in some extraordinary and mystical way, now, beforehand: “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might display the surpassing riches of His grace, demonstrated by His kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6-7). Please do not underestimate the nature of that ‘being seated with Him in the heavenly places’. It is the underlying reality of our life right now!

To reign with Him means exercising wisdom and being the very best version of ourselves that we can be. It means exercising great authority as dispensers of that wisdom and of truth which we speak and write into this world. Reigning with Christ means that we do not regard our experience as some kind of superficial happy-clappy, lovey-dovey, laughy-fall-about, life of euphoria. While there can be lighter relief (what Bunyan, in his “Pilgrim’s Progress”, called “a delicate plain called ease”, which, by the way, the protagonist Christian was “quickly got over”!), our lives and work are a serious business, upholding unpopular but necessary truths in the midst of a hostile world — exercising our reign in a dynamic, authoritative manner. If the whole world loves you, then there is something radically wrong with your life. For, in the main, “what is highly esteemed among people is detestable before God” (Luke 16:15).

Then it says, in our text above, that those who had been martyred and those who had kept their allegiance to Christ along with all others remaining on earth who have not faltered by giving in to the beast-system which always seeks to undermine the faith of Christ’s disciples and get them to renounce that faith, that

“they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come back to life until the thousand years were complete). This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection! The second death has no power over them”.

“They came to life”. In what way had they ‘come to life’, which is also called here “the first resurrection” (for the text beginning with “the rest of the dead…” is plainly in parenthesis)? This is those who had already been martyred and those faithful ones still remaining on earth. How could they have “come to life”? The resurrection of their bodies had not yet occurred, so it cannot mean that. It really isn’t that difficult to discern what this means if we apply ourselves diligently. The fact is that if you are a genuine disciple of Christ, you have indeed already “come to life”, for the text is simply referring to the regeneration of the one who comes to Christ. Just as John implies that there are two deaths when he writes of “the second death”, the first and the second, so there are also implied two resurrections when he speaks of the first, and they are parallel to each other. We have already covered this in an earlier chapter above, but in view of the important context here in our present text, and if readers are only consulting my words in this present chapter, I will state it again.

The 2 Resurrections and 2 Deaths in the Spiritual Life of Man

In order to understand the meaning of the first and second resurrections, one must have a grasp of the meanings of the first and second deaths. So, the first death is the separation from God which humans experience through their moral failure, sin, flouting Divine law. That is the natural life-state of all people born into this world. To put it crudely, as Paul says: “The payoff of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). He is not speaking there solely about physical death. The first death is the unregenerate state of spiritual death before the grave which, if not rectified by regeneration while one is still alive, leads to the second death after the grave.

The second death is the complete separation from the Divine after physical death of all those who have chosen darkness over Light and followed the whims of their egos instead of the will of God, leading to spiritual death beyond the grave. Therefore, if the first death is spiritual deadness during one’s life, the first resurrection from that state of deadness in life involves the act of becoming a disciple of the Christ so that one is then back in relationship with the Divine. Such regeneration is like a resurrection from the dead — being raised up by God from being spiritually dead. As Paul puts it:

“You were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to walk when you conformed to the ways of this world and of the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the ‘children of disobedience’… But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions” (Ephesians 2:1-2,45).

Paul is clearly saying there, “In your former way of life, you were spiritually dead, but God has now made you alive!” Disciples of Christ have come to life. Surely, that must be the meaning of the ‘first resurrection’. To become a disciple is like a rebirth — being made alive out of death. Christ specifically said as much: “Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not come under judgment. Indeed, he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). He or she has “crossed over from death to life” even before physical death itself! This is surely the ‘first resurrection’. One is completely renewed spiritually (though not yet physically) already in this life if one devotes one’s life to Christ and becomes one of His disciples. Paul calls it being a new human creation: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, the new has come into being” (2 Corinthians 5:17). So, this being a new creation is a kind of resurrection from the dead, the ‘first resurrection’ — one has ‘crossed over from death to life’.

The ‘second resurrection’ is that which happens at the end of this age when the Christ returns, and our souls after physical death are united with our resurrected bodies. “Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection! The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and will reign with Him for a thousand years”. That is the reality of the lives of the disciples of Christ in the Age of the Ekklesia, the symbolic ‘one thousand years’, which is right now and however long remains before Satan is let loose from his restraint to begin his short time (“little season”) of mayhem on earth.

There is one sentence in verse 5 which could make folks scratch their heads if they are not yet aware of the context: “The rest of the dead did not come back to life until the thousand years were complete” (verse 5a). Plainly it is parenthetical, referring to all those who do not have faith in Christ and who have instead given their allegiance to the beast (thereby having his ‘mark’). A number of Bible translations actually (and rightly) put those words in brackets. The NET Bible translators (who do parenthesise those words) also put a note in their text which says: “This statement appears to be a parenthetical comment by the author”. Indeed it does, and so it is.

So when our text says, in parenthesis, in verse 5, “The rest of the dead did not come back to life until the thousand years were complete”, it is referring to the bodily resurrection of those who have no allegiance to Christ; whereas the second sentence, “This is the first resurrection”, refers back to those who “came to life” in verse 4. When considering verse 5, it is as if John is saying:

“In case you were wondering what happens to all the others, it is like this: Whereas all genuine disciples of Christ (whether they are martyrs or faithful disciples on earth) are ‘raised up’ from the state of deadness, spiritually speaking (in what is tantamount to a first resurrection), the rest who are not disciples of Christ and who have therefore not even undergone that “first resurrection” will certainly undergo the second resurrection — which is the bodily resurrection — once the Age of the Ekklesia has finished and Christ returns”.

For the bodily resurrection — the rejoining of earthly bodies to their souls, though in a totally transformed form — is for all, regardless of whether they are disciples of Christ or not. Those who are Christ’s will be resurrected to newness of life, while those who are not Christ’s will be resurrected to judgement, eternal destruction, the ‘second death’ — an eternal state of being consciously separated from God, an experience to be avoided at all costs (John 5:28-29).

The End of the Age of the Ekklesia (20:7-9)

Next, we have verses 7-9:

“When the thousand years are complete, Satan will be released from his prison, and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—to assemble them for battle. Their number is like the sand of the seashore. And they marched across the broad expanse of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. But fire came down from heaven and consumed them”.

At certain key points, this is virtually a carbon copy of what we read in chapter 11 of the Book of Revelation. First, there is this: “When the two witnesses have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will wage war with them and will overpower and kill them”. The two witnesses finishing their testimony must surely be equated with the words in our text, “When the thousand years are complete”. For the one thousand years is the Age of the Ekklesia, the time of the testimony of the true church. (Jesus also says that when the Gospel testimony is finished, then the end can come, Matthew 24:14). Then, in chapter 11, the words “the beast that comes up from the Abyss will wage war with [the saints], and will overpower and kill them” — which symbolises Satan embarking on a final murderous persecution of the Ekklesia — are the equivalent of the words in our text:

“Satan will be released from his prison [in the Abyss], and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—to assemble them for battle. Their number is like the sand of the seashore. And they marched across the broad expanse of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city”.

The “camp of the saints” and “the beloved city” represent the Ekklesia, the true Church, which is the New Jerusalem. So exactly the same event is being portrayed in both these instances. It is the time near the end of history when the Antichrist will stir up the nations under his sway to embark on the global genocide against all disciples of Christ, and to obliterate all trace of the mention of Christ, from all of which Satan has been restrained throughout the entire Age of the Ekklesia. At that time, Satan (via the Antichrist) will have his wicked way with the saints and overcome them, just as it also says in chapter 13, verse 7: “Then the beast was permitted to wage war against the saints and to conquer them”. The same is said in Daniel 7:21-22:

“As I watched, this horn was waging war against the saints and prevailing against them, until the Ancient of Days arrived and pronounced judgment in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for them to possess the kingdom”.

However, the Ekklesia will still continue to be “nourished” spiritually and thus encouraged (see verses 6 & 14 of chapter 12), in spite of the terrible pogrom against it.

When one compares Scripture with Scripture, the evidence is overwhelming, showing that Satan will be restrained from deceiving the nations under his sway into waging all-out war on the Ekklesia until the end of the Age of the Ekklesia (the end of which is portrayed in the words, “when the two witnesses have finished their testimony”), at which point he will get the job which is set before him completed in a horrific and bloodcurdling manner.

Thus, that full deceiving of the nations mentioned in Revelation 20:3,8 will be enacted when the Antichrist is revealed, which will occur after the divinely-appointed restraint is taken away. Then all hell really will break loose. It is obvious that Satan has not been wholly restrained in every possible way throughout the Age of the Ekklesia. There is still a great deal that he has been permitted to do; and one can see that there has plainly been a considerable amount of Satan-induced havoc throughout the past two-thousand years. However, I am not claiming that these verses teach that all satanic activity has been wholly bridled, for they refer only to a particular historical situation which is being held back from fulfilment until the time is ripe in God’s cosmic plan. We need to understand this. The specific historical situation which Satan has been restrained from fulfilling during the Age of the Ekklesia, this Gospel Age, has been his ability to deceive the nations into one great universal, global, Christ-hating, enmity towards the true disciples of Christ across the world. Babel 2.0.

So, as it says in our text, “when the thousand years [i.e. the Age of the Ekklesia] are complete, Satan will be released from his prison” (verse 7). Then, when our text says that Satan “will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—to assemble them for battle”, one must not think here of a literal physical war on an earthly battlefield. This is spiritual warfare, of course, just as in the other passages in chapters 11 and 13. And what is this battle? As stated in chapter 16, verse 16, “And they assembled the kings in the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon”. That’s it! When our text says that the nations are deceived into being assembled for battle in the four corners of the earth — Gog and Magog, that too is Armageddon. That same battle as in chapter 17, verse 14, saying that the nations of the earth (symbolised as ten kings) “will make war against the Lamb”. The same battle as in chapter 19, verse 19: “Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies assembled to wage war against the One seated on the horse, and against His army”. This is not a physical battle in the geographical land of Israel. It is global, and it is a spiritual battle against the Ekklesia to silence her and all mention of Christ once and for all.

So many texts in the Book of Revelation finish up with this torrent of evil being unleashed against Christ and His disciples, which until then had been under severe restraint from being able to happen. Why would that be? This is an important question. Why has Satan had all this pent-up anger towards Christ and His Ekklesia? Well, here is why: In chapter 12, after Christ had ascended to heaven, we saw that Satan was cast down to the earth as a completely defeated tyrant. There we read:

“When the dragon saw that he had been thrown to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle to fly from the presence of the serpent to her place in the wilderness, where she was nourished for a time, and times, and half a time” (Revelation 12:13-14).

So Satan was filled with venom because of his defeat. He immediately wanted to take it out on the Ekklesia (symbolised as the “woman” in that text). But the Divinely-appointed restraining order came into being and the Ekklesia was protected (styled here as “nourished”). Although vicious persecutions of disciples have taken place throughout this age, Satan has never been able to gather all the nations of the world into a global, Christ-hating, church-destroying entity. But when the Antichrist is revealed and the gloves have come off, then he can strike.

But there is even more behind this pogrom against the Ekklesia. When the Antichrist comes to power, as Paul states, “he will oppose and exalt himself above every so-called god or object of worship. So he will seat himself in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4). This element of blasphemy is reiterated here in the Book of Revelation: “And the beast opened its mouth to speak blasphemies against God and to slander His name and His tabernacle—those who dwell in heaven” (Revelation 13:6). The same kind of prophecy about him occurs in the Book of Daniel: “He will speak out against the Most High and oppress the saints of the Most High, intending to change the appointed times and laws” (Daniel 7:25). In other words, he will place himself above all law, both human and Divine. Here is a similar prophecy about him in the Book of Daniel:

“Then the king will do as he pleases and will exalt and magnify himself above every god, and he will speak monstrous things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been decreed must be accomplished. He will show no regard for the gods of his fathers, nor for the one desired by women, nor for any other god, because he will magnify himself above them all” (Daniel 11:36-37).

Now we can see why the Antichrist (Satan’s man on earth) would be so rabid in his wanting to destroy every evidence of the Ekklesia. He believes himself to be God and above any other thing that can be cited as a god, which is understandable as the Antichrist will be ‘Satan’s man on earth’ — one could almost say Satan incarnate! — whereas all the disciples of Christ still alive on the earth at that time will identify him as the Antichrist and as an impostor, a counterfeit “christ”, and no god at all, and they will continue to worship the true God and pay homage only to Christ. Now we have a framework in which to understand his hostility to the Ekklesia. Because, first, he is filled with anger against Christ and those who proclaim His name on earth as he has been vanquished by Him; plus the Ekklesia on earth are the only ones who can and will authoritatively dispute his false claims to divinity. If he can eradicate them, then he will have the stage unchallenged (as he imagines).

Now, many may find it hard to believe that the affairs of this world will one day end up as the Antichrist and his nations versus the Ekklesia. After all, the Church today is predominantly just a laughing stock in the world and a complete irrelevance to them. Well, when the Antichrist is revealed, that will sort out the true Ekklesia from the counterfeit “Church”. All the “Zizania” (remember the parable of the Zizania, tares, which I opened up in an earlier section?), false Christians, will be revealed for who and what they are, and then just the true disciples will remain as representing Christ, for the others will not be able to stand the ‘heat in the kitchen’. Then the real battle which has always been under the surface of things in this world will come acutely into view — the battle waged by Satan against God, His Christ and His people, which throughout the Age of the Ekklesia, the symbolic ‘one thousand years’ of our chapter in the Book of Revelation, has been under restraint.

Finally, the “church militant” across the world in all its martyrful beauty will be seen to stand up for her Master even unto death, while the false ‘church’ will become a puppet for the Antichrist.

Antichrist Cast Out

Then we read in our text: “But fire came down from heaven and consumed them” (verse 9b). This again fits right into the pattern from Scripture which I gave above. If you recall, there were three bullet-points. Here is the third of them. With the relevant part in bold:

• This short period (“little season”) of demonic mayhem is immediately followed by the Second Coming of Christ, who will bring on the resurrection, judge the world, destroy the Antichrist and Satan, and bring in “The Restoration of All Things” in the new heaven and new earth.

It is a brief period of mayhem, as we have reiterated a number of times earlier in this section, which is soon succeeded by the return of Christ. So our text says that the great persecution of the saints takes place, and then, almost in the same breath, that fire came down from heaven and consumed them. This terrible time of tribulation was also referred to by Christ when He said that it would be “unmatched from the beginning of the world until now, and never to be seen again” (Matthew 24:21). That is some serious tribulation right there; and it involves the holocaust against the Ekklesia that I have mentioned many times (which will put all earlier holocausts in history in the shade), and to which John refers a number of times also (e.g. Revelation 11:7; 13:7; 17:14a; 19:19; 20:9). But just as our own text says that “fire came down from heaven and consumed them”, many of these texts — after showing how there will be a terrible holocaust against the Ekklesia — immediately state that the pogrom will not last long but will be overturned by Christ: For example, “They will make war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will triumph over them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings” (Rev 17:14). Just like when the description in chapter 13 of the double-beast and the conquest over the saints is immediately followed by chapter 14, in which we read of an angel flying overhead

“with the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation and tribe and tongue and people. And he said in a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgement has come’” (Revelation 14:6-7).

Similarly, when Paul speaks of the revealing of the “man of lawlessness” (plainly the Antichrist), he immediately adds, “whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of His mouth and annihilate by the majesty of His arrival” (2 Thessalonians 2:8).

Truly it is just a “little” season of satanic mayhem! But it is really a major eschatological teaching that the saints will not escape the great tribulation, for that tribulation is specifically aimed at the Ekklesia and has no other basis! To claim otherwise could easily be Satan trying to induce complacency instead of watchfulness, thereby undermining growth in strength and grace, while destabilising the necessary spirit of readiness. The last one hundred years has produced a mass of people professing to be “Christians” who cannot wait to get ‘raptured’ off the earth before all hell breaks loose. This whole ‘rapture’ thing is a delusion and a hideous travesty of truth, as I showed in an excursus on the ‘rapture’ in §8 of chapter 5 (now also an article here: https://diakrisis-project.com/2022/03/09/the-perturbing-pastoral-implications-of-the-rapture/ ).

It is true, however, that this time of tribulation will be cut short (for it is just a “little” season!), as Jesus also added when He spoke about this time of great suffering and affliction (Matthew 24:22). How long it will last, one can have no realistic idea. However, it seems to be implied in the texts that it will not be centuries or even decades. It could just be a few years or less. But the regime will have to become established with everyone on board in a vast operation of tyranny, force and extermination which will have the worldwide support of the people in general (Revelation 11:10).

How long did it take the Chinese, or the Soviets, or the Nazis to oil the wheels of their extermination machines? Some years; and that was just one individual country doing so. But technology has moved on so much since then. Now, the whole force of Artificial Intelligence, gargantuan surveillance and data retention will make the job faster and easier, even though global. The advent of the high-surveillance state will make any genocidal operation that much easier. The preparation for that is well under way even now, as spearheaded by the Trump/Vance regime’s counterfeitly-named “Genesis Mission” (see Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Unveils the Genesis Mission to Accelerate AI for Scientific Discovery – The White House ).

Normally, one could comfort oneself with the knowledge that tyranny has never lasted long on this earth. Empires have come and gone like dust blowing across a desert. Another empire would take out any currently tyrannical empire sooner or later. However, the empire of the Antichrist will not be an empire of one nation but an absolute global confederacy (Revelation 13:8), so there can be no other nation or empire to challenge it, humanly speaking. The only possible relief can be the return of Christ. Take comfort in that and be prepared to lay down your life for His testimony, just as many did during the Roman Empire — an estimated two million souls between the first century AD and AD 325, not to mention the millions since then. Imagine how it would pan out today with orders being able to be carried out immediately across the whole globe simultaneously. The technology for instantaneous extermination is rapidly being developed as I write. The whole Covid ‘plandemic’ of 2020-2022 has been engineered precisely for the rehearsal purposes of cranking up the control of governing authorities and developing the powers of the surveillance state.

[If any reader is baulking at my use of the word, “plandemic” (a portmanteau of ‘planned pandemic’), please read the important article by Pastor Dean Davis, entitled “Covid-19 Vaccines And Vaccination Mandates: How Should Christians Respond?” You will find that article at this link: https://www.clr4u.org/covid-19-vaccines-and-vaccination-mandates-how-should-christians-respond/ — though because it keeps being ‘hidden’ by search engines, try this link too: https://theaquilareport.com/covid-19-vaccines–and-vaccination-mandates-how-should-christians-respond/ . See also my own article about all this here: https://diakrisis-project.com/2021/06/06/you-have-been-spooked/ .].

“But fire came down from heaven and consumed them”. That’s the end of it right there in the last part of verse 9 in our text! This is the moment that evil has come sufficiently to its head for the whole show to be brought to a close. If you recall, I said that this “delay” (so far two thousand years) in bringing in the judgement, which could easily have been immediately after Christ’s ascension, has been so that the full number of God’s people can be brought into the Ekklesia (for many souls were yet to be born), and so that the world can “fill up” its cup of iniquity and prove itself to be ripe for Divine judgement and no one can complain that it is not just.

If I was to say to most people that this is an evil age with an evil world run by deeply evil people, they would think I was being ‘extreme’ or ‘negative’ and that if one looks one can find some good in everyone. This is why the depth of evil has to be publicly proven to be true. Jesus knew it, as John showed when he wrote about Christ what I believe are some of the most perceptive words in the Bible:

“Many people saw the signs He was doing and believed in His name. But Jesus did not entrust Himself to them, for He knew all about people. He did not need anyone to testimony to Him about human nature, for He knew what is in people” (John 2:23-25).

That really is a damning indictment on the untransformed human being who knows nothing about metanoia and who is as malleable and manipulable as a child’s playdough and thereby not to be trusted. For what Paul called “the mystery of lawlessness” has been working its way throughout this age and across this world continually, and growing in magnitude like yeast working in dough to make it rise. It was “already at work” in Paul’s day but, as he said, “the one who now restrains it will continue until he is taken out of the way”. That being “taken out of the way” (presumably the removal of a restraining angel) is what will lead to the final scenes of this civilisation and cosmos as all satanic hell breaks loose on earth (Satan’s “little season”) when “the lawless one” (the Antichrist) will be revealed, then (because it is only a “little” season) “the Lord Jesus will slay [him] with the breath of His mouth and annihilate by the majesty of His arrival” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8).

So, to sum up again, we can see that all the above in the 20^th chapter of the Book of Revelation is the fulfilment of that biblical three-bullet-point pattern about which I have been speaking throughout this chapter, and about which I shall now remind you again:

• In the wake of Christ’s ascension, there is a lengthy period of Divine restraint upon Satan and his forces of darkness preventing them from gathering the nations into one conglomerate, genocidal, Church-destroying, Christ-hating entity, thus enabling the Ekklesia (symbolised as the ‘two witnesses’) to proclaim the truth about Christ, despite human and demonic evil across the globe gradually increasing as the end of the age draws near.
• This restraint will be followed by a short period (KJV: “little season”) during which the restraint will be taken away and Satan will be divinely permitted to achieve his kingdom-building goal through the Antichrist and all the nations controlled by him in a one-world government. This will culminate in one vast global outburst of brutal, murderous persecution of the Ekklesia, which is called in Scripture both Armageddon and Gog and Magog.
• That short period of demonic mayhem is immediately followed by the Second Coming of Christ, who will bring on the resurrection, judge the world, destroy the Antichrist and Satan, and bring in “The Restoration of All Things” in the new heaven and new earth.

The sequence of events in this 20^th chapter of the Book of Revelation fits that pattern perfectly and is very obviously an outworking of it. I hope that we can now understand what Satan’s “little season” is all about and when it will take place. It is synonymous with the time of great tribulation, and the disciples of Christ will undergo that as proof of their ‘enduring to the end’. For only those who endure to the end will have proved their salvation (Matthew 24:13).

.

.

.

© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2025
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

.