When the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed
Satan loosed
Notice what immediately follows this thousand years.
1. The devil is letloose. He who lets him loose is, of course, the same who bound him, and sealed him in the prison of the abyss. It seems like a great pity, after the world has rested for a thousand years, that this arch-enemy of its peace should again be let loose upon it. But there seems to be some sort of necessity for it. The statement to John was, that he must be loosed a little time (verse 3). Some interest of righteousness and moral government renders it proper that he should be allowed this last limited freedom. If for nothing else, it is not unimportant that he should have this opportunity to prove how little an imprisonment of a thousand years had served to change him, or reform his malignity.
2. He seduces Gog and Magog into rebellion. He does not send forth this time to “the kings of the earth,” for there are then no mortal kings to be led astray, but he goes direct to the people, insinuates his malice against the rule under which the King of kings has placed the nations, and seeks to persuade them into an attempt to overthrow it. To those who dwell in the outskirts and darker places of the earth, he wends his sullen way. Who Gog and Magog arewe may not be able to tell. But the allusion to the “corners of the earth” as the regions whence these rebels come, sufficiently indicates that they are among the hindermost of peoples and the least advanced and cultured among the millennial nations. Satan succeeds in rendering them dissatisfied with the holy rule of God’s glorified saints, and induces them to believe that they can successfully throw it off and crush it out, as the deluded kings under the Antichrist were persuaded a thousand years before.
3. A terrible disaster ensues. A madder thing than Gog and Magog’s attempt was never undertaken upon earth. It is simply a march into the jaws of death, for no rebellion against the kings who then hold the reins of government can be tolerated. The insane war is quickly terminated. “There came down fire out of heaven and devoured them.” Not a man of them escapes.
4. Satan meets his final perdition. He was imprisoned in the abyss before; but he is now “cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where also the Beast and the False Prophet [are].” (J. A. Seiss, D. D.)
Satan loosed from his prison after the thousand years
During the millennial period on earth, while the departed saints are living and reigning with Christ, evil will be subdued and restrained, but by no means will it be extinct. Had it been extinct it could not have broken out again, nor would there be any need for the
ðáñåìâïëḉ
of the saints. The new uprising of evil after the thousand years’ rest is certainly not what we should expect or desire. But doubtless there is a Divine reason for permitting it so to be, or it would not be. Let us look at this matter closely in the light of God’s Word, and maybe we shall find more to instruct us on this theme than at first sight appears probable.
I. We gather from this passage some hints as to the state of the Church on earth during the millennial period.
1. There is no reason to doubt that the millennium, owing to the effective restraint then put upon evil through the Word of truth and the power of God, will be a period of very great blessedness. Satan is the active agent in so much evil, and when he is bound a large proportion of evil will cease to exist, and a far more rapid diffusion of good will be the blessed result.
2. There is no reason whatever to suppose, from any of the teaching of Scripture, that our Lord Jesus Christ will then be present on the earth in any other way than in the power of His Spirit.
3. It is equally clear that the millennium will notbe a period of unmixed good, nor will it be a time when the saints can dispense with the
ðáñåìâïëḉ
. Compared with things as they are now, the earth will be at rest; but it will not be heaven. Evil will be subdued, but far from extinct. The possibility of an outbreak will exist still.
4. There will also still be death in the world. The deathless state enters not in till the new heavens and the new earth appear, and Paradise is regained. Not till then will there be “no more curse.”
5. The Church will still have to be prepared for war. Obviously, if the state of things on earth during the millennium were one of universal righteousness, there would be no nations to be deceived. Still less can we suppose that, after the resurrection from the dead, the glorified saints are to go about, sword in hand, to the holy war.
II. What do we gather from Scripture concerning this onset of ill after the millennium?
1. It is necessary. There is a little word in the third verse of this chapter of which we are too apt to lose sight. It is the word “must.” “After that, he must be loosed a little season.” Must! Why? We are not told.
2. It will be a fierce onset. It will be after the old kind, by “deception” (verse 8). What will be the special form of deceit he will use we are not told, and conjecture is useless.
3. It will be a restricted struggle. Satan will be bound by time even when loosed as to space. The same hand that bound retains its power even when the evil one is loosed. Not even at the worst of times is the world given over to the devil.
4. It will be for a little season. Not only restricted, but within very narrow limits. The conflict may be sharp, but it will be short.
5. It will be suicidal. Satan will overshoot the mark, and fall into hisown snare.
6. The struggle will be even serviceable to the Church; for not only will it reveal more and more the majesty of God in defending His own cause, but it will end in the hurling of Satan to a lower depth than before. In chap. 12:9 we read that the devil was cast down to earth. In Rev_20:3 he is cast into the abyss. But in Rev_20:10 he is cast into thelake of fire. Hence--
7. The struggle will be--the last. If the reader has followed the plan of the book, he will have noted how one after another of the foes of God and man are destroyed. They were four.
(1) The dragon--Satan.
(2) The beast.
(3) The false prophet.
(4) Babylon the great.
III. What are the related truths to which this passage points us?
1. In the light of the views of the millennium and of what is to follow, two sets of apparently conflicting passages fall into place. There is one set which indicates that, as the result of the first coming of Christ, all the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord; there is another set which indicates that there will be a fierce outbreak of evil before our Lord shall come. It isno small confirmation of the correctness of an interpretation of this passage if thereby apparently conflicting statements fall in place. The binding of Satan, which was and is effected through our Lord Jesus Christ, has become more and more stringent as souls are plucked from his grasp; and we are to see a time of peace and calm when he will be even more completely bound than he is now. But after that there is to be the new onrush of evil, so that before our Lord shall come a fiercer conflict than has ever been known will be fought, ere the great struggle shall be completely at an end, and then the Lord shall come.
2. We see that there are two ways in which evil is being dealt with. That of removal, when souls are being renewed; and that of restraint, when evil beings are kept with prescribed limits. And both these ways of working are going on now, and will do during this millennial age.
3. Be it ours to take heart as we get a fresh glimpse of the Divine plan, viz., that however oft the conflict with evil and the evil onemay be renewed, yet in every case the issue is that of the defeat of evil, and its banishment to a lower depth of disgrace than before. “Who hath ever hardened himself against God and prospered?”
4. Finally, what God will ultimately do with evil and the evil one, no one can positively say. (C. Clemance, D. D.)
The age of moral reaction
I. The reaction is brought about in the manner in which mankind have ever degenerated.
1. Here is deception. Hell and heaven are acting on our world through thoughts--the one through the false, and the other through the true.
2. Here is deception employed by Satan. “He hath blinded the minds of men.”
3. Here is deception employed by Satan, first upon those who are most assailable, and afterwards through them upon others.
II. The reaction is of a character the most threatening.
1. The vast number of its agents.
2. The anti-Christian aim of its agents. They made efforts to assault the most central and vital part of religion.
III. The reaction terminates in the everlasting destruction of all its agents.
1. There is in the universe a distinct local scene, where the wicked of all classes are to receive their righteous retribution.
2. The retribution which the wicked will endure in this scene will be of a most terrible description. “Fire” is the emblem of suffering (Zec_13:9; 1Co_3:13-15; 1Pe_1:7); “brimstone” is the emblem of desolation (Job_18:15). (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Compassed the camp of the saints about.--
The saints compassed by evil
1. Whereas it is said that they compassed the camp of the saints about, we see that the saints and Church of Christ is still, and ever hath been, and shall be to the end, the butt of Satan’s malice, whereof she needs not to expect either intermission or mitigation.
2. We see the extremity that she may by God’s permission be brought unto, to be compassed about on all sides without any outget, as Israel was coming out of Egypt, or that boat wherein Christ was (Mat_8:1-34.); yet the Lord will never fail her, but her extremity will be seen to be His opportunity.
3. Whereas the Church is called the beloved city, this is a cordial to all the truly godly, that whatever their estate be here, hated of the world and persecuted, yet they are beloved of God, and shall be preserved by Him.
4. Whereas it is said that fire came down from heaven and devoured them, we see that full and final destruction at last shall be the end of all God’s enemies. (Wm. Guild,D. D.)
