11th August 2024 – Revelation 20:1-5

20 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.

Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the 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 their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection.


The basic mistake in interpretation here is to assume that the events spoken of here take place at the end-time, - the last days, associated with Christ's second coming. But this is an impossible assumption, on the view that we have consistently followed in these Notes which is that Revelation we have a series of parallel visions, rather than a serial story with each chapter going on from the end of the previous one. Chapter 20, it should be clear, begins the seventh and final section of the book. The purpose of the latter half of Revelation has been to introduce us to the enemies set up in array against Christ, and show their destruction, one by one. In chapter 20 we come to the last of these - the dragon, that old serpent, the devil. But it is a new section, and each new section has been seen to go back to the beginning again, to the first coming of Christ and proceed to the second coming. And if there is to be any consistency of interpretation at all, the opening verses of chapter 20 must be taken to refer to events associated with Christ's first coming to the earth. What they give is an 'apocalyptic' account of what goes on behind history, the story from the viewpoint of the kingdom of God, and of its breaking into the midst of our sinful world in the Incarnation and Atonement of the Son of God, and its reign in the midst of our time. In this connection it is significant that the work of binding Satan referred to here in v 2 is associated in other parts of Scripture with Christ's first coming, and supremely with His cross and Resurrection, cf Matthew 12:29 where 'binding the strong man' has the same word as in 2. Compare also Luke 10:17, 18, where Satan is spoken of as falling as lightning from heaven -surely this corresponds to the description we have here in 2, 3, as do John 12:31 and Colossians 2:15. A careful comparison and consideration of these references should make it plain that they 'fix' the time of Revelation 20:1-5, as being our Lord's atonement and victory.