And when the thousand years have been completed, Satan shall be loosed from his prison,
Revelation 20 has just shown a thousand years of peace under the reign of Christ, with the great enemy sealed in the abyss — the pit this verse calls his prison. Verse 7 opens it — so why would God release the one He had locked away?
This is not a stray event. One writer, using the older wording of verse 3, lists what must happen first.
"After these things he must be loosed for a little time." A group of connected events comes before the loosing of Satan. "After these things" refers to more than the imprisonment in the abyss. He is "loosed for a little time" only after a long list of events: the destruction of Babylon, the marriage of the Lamb, the war on earth, and the complete rout and destruction of the Beast, the False Prophet and their armies. His release also follows the binding of the dragon, the sealing of the abyss, and Satan's long captivity of a thousand years. There are two brief periods in the coming crisis connected with the career of Satan, in both of which he shows unusual activity. First, from his expulsion from Heaven until he is chained in the abyss; second, from his release out of the abyss until he is cast into the lake of fire.
Many assume that once a golden age arrives, history is settled for good. This verse says otherwise.
The thought in the minds of many is that if the millennium came in, then of course everything would be fixed and settled for ever. But it is not so. There is a fixed and limited period during which the blessed Son of Man will have His mediatorial reign over the earth. But it comes to a close. When it ends, the first thing we find is this: Satan is loosed out of his prison.
The release serves a purpose. It puts the human heart to one last test.
When the thousand years are finished, Satan is let loose again. He comes up on the earth, but he never gets up to heaven again. But the nations are tested by his temptation. No mere means can make the heart of man dependable — not even seeing Christ and enjoying the fruits of His glory. Men fall into Satan's hands as soon as they are tempted, in number as the sand of the sea. They enjoyed blessing while unfaithfulness would have cost them at once, and nothing tempted them. They prove unfaithful as soon as they are tempted, as soon as the heart is tried. It was the last and needed trial of man; needed because they could not have finally enjoyed God with natural hearts.
Perfect government is not the same thing as a changed heart.
Even the age of visible glory cannot change the heart of man. With the enemy gone and the great King present and in control, people obeyed for a long while — but the obedience was pretended. The kingdom can govern and bless but not convert man. Even the preaching of the grace of God is powerless unless the life-giving power of His own Spirit brings it home. In short, nothing is enough — no testimony, no work, power, or glory — without the word of God applied by the Spirit of God. But this shows something important: the true nature of the kingdom, or millennial reign. "That day" does not mean a time when everybody will be converted, but when the Lord Jesus will govern righteously.
If the reign was so good, who is left for Satan to deceive? Two groups obeyed without ever being born of God.
There will be great numbers at the end of the millennial reign who are not born of God. Some will have entered the Millennium unconverted. Psalm 18:43-45 speaks of strangers cringing before Messiah, obeying Him out of fear, not faith. Great numbers born during that time will also refuse to bow the heart to the Lord Jesus. They will submit outwardly, because circumstances of every kind will be pleasant and favourable. The loosing of Satan at the end will serve to make clear what is really in their hearts.
The names for this enemy change as his story moves. Verse 7 calls him Satan.
The dragon was first cast out of Heaven, then shut up in the abyss, and now cast into the lake of fire. As the dragon he is shut up, as Satan he is loosed, and as the devil he is cast into the lake of fire.
- Bound — the thousand years were a real imprisonment in a sealed abyss. The verse marks the end of the term, not an escape.
- Loosed — the release is God's doing, and it is short. It is the second and last burst of this enemy's freedom.
- Tested — one last trial of hearts that had every advantage: a visible King, pleasant circumstances, and no tempter.
- Revealed — good government can hide an unchanged heart. The kingdom can govern and bless, but it cannot convert.
- Judged — the dragon was shut in the abyss; the devil ends in the lake of fire. Only new birth, not perfect conditions, secures anyone for God.
and shall go out to deceive the nations which [are] in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war, whose number [is] as the sand of the sea.
A thousand years of Christ's rule over the earth have just ended, and God lets the imprisoned enemy out again. His first move is not war but deception, and the crowd that answers him is beyond counting.
Many readers tie this scene to the invasion Ezekiel describes. Commentators warn against that. They point to differences in timing, in the nations involved, and in how it ends.
In Revelation 20:8 we also read of Gog and Magog attacking "the camp of the saints and the beloved city," Jerusalem. But do not confuse this with the prophecy in Ezekiel. Here they come out of "the four corners of the earth," and the two battles happen at different times. In Ezekiel the attack comes before Israel is settled in the land for good, as the context shows. In Revelation it comes after the thousand years... The names in Ezekiel are surely in view here. "Gog and Magog" are symbolic names, used for all the proud and powerful armies of the time after the thousand years. Satan will gather them from every quarter to attack the kingdom of the Lord Jesus as set up on earth, but fire from heaven will devour them. When Satan is loosed, he still cannot raise up an empire against the Lord.
"The four corners of the earth" shows how wide this last gathering spreads. It also shows how little effort it costs the deceiver.
Those armies before the thousand years came only from Russia and nearby Eastern countries. But here they come from "the four corners of the earth." From east, west, north, and south, Satan brings against Palestine everyone who is set against the Lord Jesus Christ. Once again he manages with ease to "deceive the nations." It is his old trade. He was a deceiver from the beginning, and he carries his character right on to the close.
If Christ has reigned for a thousand years, where do such armies come from? One writer points to two causes: obedience that was only pretended, and a population that kept growing.
God's judgments will greatly thin out the peoples of the earth. Large numbers will be saved. But many will give only pretended obedience to the King who reigns over the earth. It is not the obedience of faith. It is forced submission under the iron rod, obedience squeezed out of them by fear... One more thing fully explains the countless crowds Satan gathers from all parts of the earth. Death, even among the unsaved, will be the exception and not the rule. Besides this, the earth will go on being filled with people as before.
The verse pairs a freed tempter with a willing audience. One writer weighs what the thousand years changed in each.
Such is man, and such is Satan. A thousand years shut up in the bottomless pit have not changed the character of the deceiver. A thousand years of blessing under Christ's rule have not changed the nature that greedily listens to the deceiver's voice.
Why does God let Satan out at all? One commentator calls it a test that had never yet been run: a test of hearts that had only ever known blessing for staying loyal.
His temptation puts the nations to the test. They had seen Christ and enjoyed the fruits of His glory, and even that was not enough. No outward means can make the heart of man safe, if that heart is to be trusted. Men fall into Satan's hands as soon as they are tempted, and their number is like the sand of the sea... This was the last trial of man, and it was needed. It was needed because they could never have enjoyed God at last with natural hearts. And the natural heart had never been tested in a place where owning a present, visible, glorious Christ brought blessing right away.
The collapse at the end says something about the reign that came before it.
Even an age of visible glory cannot change the heart of man. With the enemy shut away and the great King holding everything in check, people gave a pretended obedience for a long time. The kingdom can govern and bless but not convert man. Even the preaching of the grace of God has no power unless His own Spirit brings it home with life-giving force... "That day" does not mean a time when everyone will be converted. It means a time when the Lord Jesus will rule in righteousness.
- Loosed — God lets Satan out after the thousand years. He comes out as he went in. Prison reformed nothing in him.
- Deceived — deception is his old trade, carried "right on to the close." Nations from every corner of the earth fall for it at once.
- Gathered — the huge numbers come from pretended obedience and from generations born during the reign, not from any failure in it.
- Exposed — commentators call this a needed trial. Hearts that had never been tempted are tested at last, and man's true nature shows.
- Named — "Gog and Magog" is a symbolic name borrowed from Ezekiel's earlier invasion. It is not the same battle. The two differ in time, in the nations, and in how they end: here fire from heaven devours the attackers.
And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city and fire came down [from God] out of the heaven and devoured them.
A thousand years of Christ's righteous reign do not end with the whole world loving Him. They end in revolt. An army marches on Jerusalem from every corner of the earth. So after such blessing, why do men still hate God? And who are the "saints" whose camp they surround?
The attackers carry names from an older prophecy. But the two events are not one event told twice.
In Revelation 20:8 we also read of Gog and Magog attacking "the camp of the saints and the beloved city," Jerusalem; but do not confuse this with the prophecy in Ezekiel. Here they come out of "the four corners of the earth," and the two battles do not happen at the same time. In Ezekiel the attack comes before Israel is settled in the land for good, as the context shows. In Revelation it comes after the thousand years of the millennium, and the final overthrow of God's enemies, led on by Satan, follows it. "Gog and Magog" are symbolic names for all the proud and powerful hordes of the time after the millennium. Their number is "as the sand of the sea." Satan will collect them from all quarters to attack the kingdom of the Lord Jesus as set up on earth.
The rebels come from everywhere, and they all move toward one place.
They crowd and cover the earth in its entirety. They come from north, south, east, and west. They gather under one leader, swayed by one deadly impulse of hatred, and to one centre. The nations have lived for one thousand years under Christ's good rule. Satan has been restrained for one thousand years, his freedom cut short. Yet the nations make the mad attempt to crush the camp of the saints and to destroy the beloved city, Jerusalem. The nations converge upon Jerusalem. Christ does not intervene. It is a matter for God to take up… All is silent in the camp and city. The apostate nations march into the jaws of death.
One commentator names both groups, and points to how sharply the two sides now stand apart.
The beloved city is Jerusalem; the camp of the saints is a larger circle and includes all of Israel and those Gentiles who, being converted, refuse Satan's deceit. They flocked to that centre. This is a clear contrast with the state pictured in the field of wheat and weeds in Christendom at the end of this age. Wheat and weeds grow together until judgment separates them. At the end of the millennium the righteous and the wicked form two clearly separate groups. … But the good and bad were not mixed together as they are now.
Commentators differ on who the camp is.
While Satan was restrained, the evil was there, but held down and hidden. He gives it energy and daring. The beloved city is of course the earthly Jerusalem. The "camp of the saints" seems to be the camp of the heavenly saints, who are the Lord's host around it. The city of course cannot be taken. The rebels are caught in open hostility to God and His people, and judgment is swift and complete: "fire came down from heaven and consumed them." The wicked are wiped off the earth.
The answer looks back over every earlier test of man.
Here we are taken to the end of the reign of Christ to learn that the flesh never alters. Before the flood men filled the earth with violence and corruption. Under law, man broke God's commands and fell into idolatry. Under grace, men reject God's offer of salvation completely, and Christendom falls away from the faith. It has been well said, "Such is man, and such is Satan. A thousand years' confinement in the bottomless pit has not changed the character of the deceiver. A thousand years' blessedness under Christ's rule has not changed the nature which greedily listens to the deceiver's voice."
This lands on a common assumption about human improvement.
All human theories about better surroundings changing man will be proved false. In Eden, in the best possible circumstances and conditions, man failed: so it will be under the favoured conditions of the millennium.
No battle is fought. God ends the siege Himself.
They surround the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but not a sword is drawn nor a gun fired. God acts in His own sovereign rights as God, and fire comes down from heaven and devours them. This is Satan's third battle with God — first at Calvary's cross, then in the second heaven, and finally at the beloved city Jerusalem; but all in vain. In this last scene we see his power utterly crushed and broken.
- Restrained — Satan is bound and Christ reigns for a thousand years. The evil does not die. It only hides.
- Released — set free, Satan finds a nature that still listens to him. Gog and Magog are symbolic names, not Ezekiel's invasion repeated.
- Revolt — the rebels come from all four quarters to one target: the earthly Jerusalem and the saints camped around it.
- Refuted — better surroundings do not improve man. He failed in Eden, and he fails again under Christ's own reign.
- Ruin — no battle is fought. Fire from heaven ends the revolt, Satan's power is broken, and the earth is cleared of the wicked.
And the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where [are] both the beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night for the ages of ages.
Satan's doom was fixed on the first pages of the Bible. It falls here, after the thousand years. The verse settles what happens to the devil, what the lake of fire is, and how long "for ever and ever" lasts.
Satan's turn comes last, when no sinner is left on earth. His sentence, though, is very old.
For the first time in the history of the race (from Genesis 3 to Revelation 20) we have an earth without a single sinner on its surface. Satan now has to be dealt with. He is allowed to see the end of all his heartless scheming. He is foiled and defeated. His doom was fixed seven thousand years before it was carried out (Genesis 3:15). His head is bruised by the woman's seed.
He does not fall in one stroke. Scripture traces a descent, and his name changes at each stage.
The dragon was first cast out of heaven, then shut up in the abyss, and now cast into the lake of fire. As the dragon he is shut up; as Satan he is loosed; and as the devil he is cast into the lake of fire. Satan, which means adversary, is the open and declared enemy of God, of Christ, of the saints, of Israel… But as the devil, the deceiver and tempter of men, he is cast into everlasting torment.
Why did Satan's final judgment wait a thousand years after the beast and the false prophet went in? One writer answers.
It was the shining out of His coming that destroyed the beast and the false prophet. They were taken and both cast alive into the lake of fire… But it was not yet the time for the last and most terrible judgment of Satan. God's testing of the world was not quite over.
The beast and the false prophet went in a thousand years earlier. One writer weighs the wording used of them now.
Into it the beast and the false prophet were cast as the millennial age began, and now at the end of that age we read that there they still "are," and not that they were. The fire had not destroyed them.
Translations differ here: some read "are," while the ESV reads "were." One writer presses what the passage proves either way.
Two human beings were cast alive into the lake of fire a thousand years before. At the close of this long period they are found there, still in existence! How clear it is that this fire is not like material fire, but something completely different! What can remain a thousand years in the lake of fire unconsumed may remain, as far as one can see, forever. Some object that no verb stands here: the sentence reads simply, "where the beast and the false prophet." Fill the gap with "were cast," they say, and it tells us nothing about how long they stay. But what of the closing words? "They" — the word is plural — "will be tormented day and night forever and ever."
Some say the phrase only means "as long as this world lasts." One writer answers from where the verse stands in the story.
Here that meaning is impossible. At this very time the world comes to an end… These words stand at the door of a boundless eternity. No measuring line of dates and periods reaches across it. In that eternity Scripture declares that God, who exists of Himself, lives "for ever and ever." In that eternity Scripture says the torment of the lost lasts "for ever and ever." Those saved by grace should not argue back against God. We should bow our heads in silence before this mystery we cannot fathom, and adore the goodness that has delivered us by such a ransom from so fearful a doom.
Commentators differ on how literally to read the fire. One describes a real place with fixed limits.
Somewhere in the universe of God there will be a restricted area ("a lake"). Evil will be confined and punished there for ever. No sinning can go on there, though hatred of heart towards God and His Son must remain. Neither new birth nor repentance is possible in hell.
Another writer asks what fire could do to a being with no body:
We know fire well and what it does to material objects; but as far as we know, it has no effect on spiritual beings. So we judge the phrase to be symbolic, like so much else in this book. Yet it stands as the symbol of God's burning displeasure, His scorching judgment.
- Sentenced — his doom, fixed in Genesis 3:15, falls here; the serpent's head is bruised at last.
- Staged — cast out of heaven, then shut in the abyss, then cast into the lake of fire: three descending steps, not one.
- Still there — the beast and false prophet went in a thousand years earlier and are there yet. The fire consumed nothing.
- Settled — "for ever and ever" falls as the world ends. No age is left to limit it. Scripture uses the same phrase of God's own life.
- Adore — do not argue back against God. Bow, and worship the goodness that ransomed us from that doom.
And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled, and place was not found for them.
John's vision moves past the thousand years and the final revolt to a throne set outside the world we know. The verse raises simple questions: who sits there, why earth and sky flee, and what shelter is left for a sinner.
The verse names the throne before it names anyone on it, and both words carry weight.
The character of the throne itself is the first thing to attract our attention. It is called "great" — great either because it fits the dignity of the Judge, or because it suits the size of the judgment. It is also called "white." This is probably not the colour we know as white, like white linen. Instead, the word really means clear or bright — the "whiteness of light." This expresses the dazzling purity of holiness — whether the holiness of the Judge Himself, or of the standard His judgment will follow. Everything connected with Him must match what He is in His own essential nature: the throne He sits on, and the sentence He pronounces. The Judge is not named here, though John saw the One seated on the throne. But we know from other Scriptures that it is Christ.
The One on the throne is not a stranger. What changes is not who He is but the office He fills.
Jesus sits upon that throne. He who is now the Saviour must then be the judge. God has put all authority into His hand, once pierced for our sins, and He sits there and wields the sword.
Many read this verse as the moment Christ returns. Commentators here press one detail against that reading: the earth has already gone.
Many people suppose this to be the time of the coming of Christ, and so put the millennium before His coming. But this will not bear the light of Scripture... When the Lord Jesus comes, He comes to the earth from heaven. But that is not the case here. For the Lord sits on a great white throne, and instead of His coming from heaven to earth, both earth and heaven are gone. It cannot be His coming to the earth, for there is no earth to come to. The entire system of earth and heaven as they now are will have vanished from the scene. It will not be annihilated, but destroyed. There is a great difference between those two thoughts.
This throne stands between two worlds — the one that flees, and the eternal one still to come.
The earth and the sky the Lord Himself appointed to display His glory and righteousness cannot stay in the glory of His face... "Earth and sky fled away" — they did not pass out of existence, and they were not annihilated. The next clause guards against that unscriptural conclusion — "no place was found for them."... The world of the thousand years passes away, and the eternal worlds come in; both are material. Between the two, the great white throne is set up. This gives profound solemnity to the scene before us. For the throne is not set on the earth, nor in relation to its dispensations and times. It is a scene entirely outside human history. We have passed out of time into eternity. The judgment of the throne is therefore final, and eternal in its very nature.
No place was found for earth and sky. Those who stand before this throne find no place either.
On what do the dead stand? Not on earth, for that has disappeared... The greatest of the prophets saw a throne with an altar of sacrifice beside it (Isaiah 6). There the altar met and answered the righteous claim of the throne. The throne in the innermost room of the tabernacle of old had blood — the witness of death — sprinkled on it. But the throne before us is great and white, and there is neither altar nor blood. Oh, the horror, the despair, the agony of standing in one's sins, searched by the blaze of divine light! There are no caves, rocks or caverns in which the guilty soul may hide, for these have fled.
- Great. The throne takes its name from the dignity of the One who fills it and the size of the judgment it carries out.
- White. Not the colour of linen but the brightness of light — the purity of the Judge and of the standard He judges by.
- The Judge. The One seated there is Christ. The hand that holds all authority was pierced for our sins. The Saviour of today is the judge of that day.
- No earth. This is not the second coming. There is no earth to come to. Heaven and earth have fled, and the scene stands outside time.
- No place. The old creation finds no room, and neither does the sinner. This throne has no altar and no blood beside it. The One who is Saviour now will be judge then.