The Little Season

A study in the Book of Revelation

"And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations..." (Rev.20:7‑8).

Of all revealed prophecy of things to come, this event, at the end of the Millennial Age, is farthest away in time, and its outlines are vague and shadowy. The suppression of the powers of evil during the Millennium is a fundamental feature of the Age and follows on the fact that a righteous, and all‑powerful Administration has taken control of the world. The evangelical work of that Administration will have the effect of bringing all men, without exception, face to face with the vital issues of eternal life or death, and before it closes every living being will have made the crucial choice, for God or Satan, for good or evil, for life or death. It is within the framework of this choice, at the end, that this rather obscure passage in Revelation has its place. It would seem on the basis of this vision that at this climax there is to be a last attempt by the forces of evil to regain the allegiance of any who may at heart still be in sympathy with sin. It is not an opportunity that will last long: it is not an effort that is going to be crowned with success. Swift and inexorable, the immutable laws of God will move to judgment.

But is this "loosing of Satan" in harmony with the revealed character of God? Having done so much to remove evil from the hearts of men and teach them of his ways, where is the logic of letting the author of all evil loose upon mankind again? For answer we must go back to the beginning. God created our first parents creatures of free‑will and with the knowledge that all they had of life and intelligence and ability they owed to him. But they had freedom of choice that their allegiance might be voluntary and not of compulsion, and under the deception of the Adversary they exercised their freedom of choice and chose wrongly. The situation will be exactly the same, except that all men will then have the benefit of experience and practical demonstration, and if any give way to the Evil One it will be in the face of full knowledge. Before men pass into everlasting life, and the next stage of their continuing experience of God, it must be demonstrated that their allegiance is sincere and of freewill even in the face of opportunity to take the opposite path. There is another factor, too, which is indicated in this passage. This will be no passive abandonment of men to the seductive influence of the Adversary with no corresponding force on the other side. The forces of righteousness will do battle with the forces of evil for every human soul, and it will be a hard thing for any man to resist the appeal of God.

The account says that Satan will "go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea." (v.8). This has been interpreted to suggest that the great majority of earth’s millions will join the rebels, as though they were the sand of the seashore for multitude compared with a relatively few righteous. This is not consistent with the Divine Plan. If, after this thousand year’s reign, which is ordained by God for the reconciliation to himself of "whosoever will," (Rev.22:17) so that his original purpose in creating humankind on the earth might go into effect, the vast majority of men fall again into sin at the first temptation, then we can only conclude that the whole creative purpose of God has been a failure. If only a minority of earth’s inhabitants eventually attain eternal life then the glowing rhapsodies of the prophets were, to say the least of it, exaggeration, and the coming of Jesus to earth by no means such "good tidings of great joy…to all people" as the angels claimed. (Luke 2:10) This is not the case. Everything that is revealed concerning the Plan of God stresses the transcendent truth that it is going to be a glorious success. So far from it being a hard thing to enter into eternal life, as was supposed in medieval times, it is in fact going to be a very hard thing to keep out of it. The interpretation is based upon a misunderstanding of the reference to "Gog and Magog." (v.8)

The expression "Gog and Magog" was a term used in Jewish literature to define the most remote and primitive peoples of the earth, as distinct from their immediate neighbours, Egypt, Syria, Assyria, Babylon, and so on. It had its origin in the days of Ezekiel’s boyhood when Israel and her neighbour nations were suddenly and without warning assailed by a savage onslaught of barbarous people from the north, of whose very existence they had previously been hardly aware. These invaders ravaged and looted for some thirty years before being driven back to the coasts of the Black Sea, from whence they had come, but Israel never forgot their visitation. It provided Ezekiel in later life with the background for his memorable description of the trouble with which this present Age is to end. The term became a synonym for ruthlessness and savagery, but basically it was a general expression for peoples from the far corners of the earth. The idea of a final attack upon the citadel of God’s holiness at the end of the Messianic reign by such peoples from the farthest parts of the earth, referred to as Gog and Magog, was a very general one at the time of the First Advent. It is not easy to decide just when or how the belief came into being or how much it owed in the first place to Ezekiel’s prophecy, but certain it is that John was not the only seer who spoke and wrote in such terms. Thus the "Sibylline Oracles," written roughly at the same time as Revelation, says that the Messianic Kingdom will be closed by an attack of all the nations upon Jerusalem and their destruction by the intervention of God. The "Apocalypse of Elijah" and the "4th Book of Ezra," among other apocryphal works of times very close to the First Advent, repeat this belief. It has to be remembered that the Jews at the First Advent had no knowledge of the coming Christian Age and the two Advents. To them the first coming of Messiah was to be the final and see the establishment of his Kingdom, so logically they placed the onslaught of these distant peoples prophesied by Ezekiel as occurring at that time. John took this popular belief and spiritualised it to show that at the end of the Millennium, a thousand years after the literal invasion of Gog and Magog at the end of the present Age, there would be a similar rebellion against the Millennial Kingdom by peoples from the "four corners of the earth." (v.8) Satan is to seek his dupes, not merely among the faithful ones at the very centre of God’s Kingdom, not among the relative few in the "beloved city," at headquarters, so to speak, but among all the millions of redeemed humanity spread abroad upon the face of the earth who themselves are as the sand of the sea for multitude .

It seems incredible that after the object lesson men will have had from the righteous rule of the Messianic Age anyone should be found ready to follow the paths of evil. The upsurge of sin described in this passage, the condemnation of the unfit in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats in Matt.25, the prohibition against the unclean and immoral entering the Holy City in Rev.21:27 and the Millennial descriptions of Psalm 66:3 alluding to the "feigned obedience" of some whose hearts remain obdurate against the appeal of the Gospel, appear to show that when all that can be done has been done, some remain whose opposition to truth and goodness is never overcome. There may be factors in this matter which we do not, even now, fully understand, but the vision of John certainly pictures this final rebellion of evil against good, and its consequences in the withdrawal of life from those who have thus demonstrated their irrevocable allegiance to evil for its own sake.

It is important to observe that those who thus take the side of the rebels do so with their eyes open. The basic meaning of the word rendered "deceive" in Rev.20 is to lead astray or in wrong paths, to wander. Those who take their places in the ranks of the Prince of Darkness do so not because they do not know, but because they do not believe. This involves the question as to the hopes and aims of the apostates. They will have seen the wondrous works of God manifest throughout the thousand years and had abundant opportunity to realise the extent of his power no less than his inherent goodness. What kind of deception is it by means of which the Devil, loosed from his prison, is able to convince them that sin and sinful men have yet the opportunity and power to regain control over the now righteous world of mankind, and restore to their own advantage the old bad days of sin and death? It must obviously be a subtle temptation, buttressed by convincing and apparently logical arguments. Even in these present days men do not embark on a desperate venture unless they have reason to hope for success, and the rebellion of that final day will be in face of a much more united and powerful world than any revolutionary has had to face in past history. Even the most hardened of the rebels will have to admit that they are up against what the world today calls a "tough proposition"! Death will have been unknown for a thousand years. Disease and sickness will have been long since eliminated. The earth will have become fair and fertile, fear and anxiety for the future long since banished, men living happily together as one great family. The days of sin and death will seem very far away—as far away as the time of William the Conqueror is to us. The knowledge of the Lord is abroad in the earth "as the waters cover the sea," (Hab.2:14) and the human race, at least the vast majority, will have become fully reconciled to God through Christ and are living their lives in full communion with him.

But some, it may be, there are, here and there, who do not seem to share in the general happiness. They will always have been marked out by their tardiness in co‑operating with others for the general welfare. They give outward and nominal assent to the laws of the Kingdom but it is easy to see that they resent them and are not at heart lovers of the Lord Jesus. They are still unreconciled to God and there can be no disguising the fact. But they have never been able to inflict evil on others nor to injure the earth. Whatever may be their inmost thoughts and desires, they have had to conform to the general rules of conduct which have been binding upon all in the Millennial world. Nevertheless they are misfits in a world which is solidly set for righteousness and harmony with God. This is a condition—if in fact there are any at the end who have thus proved impervious to the Divine appeal—which cannot be permitted to endure. God’s creation is a creation of order in which no element of disorder can continue indefinitely, and sin is disorder in creation. A consideration which does not often come readily to the mind is that a heaven for the righteous in which the unrighteous is compelled to live everlastingly will become hell (unacceptable) to the unrighteous, an environment with which he has no sympathy and into which he cannot fit. Such an everlasting life would become unendurable so that the apparently harsh sentence "the wages of sin is death" (Rom.6:23) in fact becomes a mercy.

Now a change becomes evident. The thousand years is at an end and there must be a certain amount of interested discussion as to precisely what happens next. The reign of Christ over the nations is to close; that much is known, and mankind is to be completely self‑governing. Clearly those whose hearts are set in them to do evil must look forward to the prospect with more than academic interest. When, for the first time for a thousand years, the Evil One finds himself able to whisper his suggestions into the ears of those who will listen, what is likely to be the nature of his deception? Could it conceivably be the old one, Satan who was so effective at the start, back there in Eden? "Ye shall be as gods—ye shall not surely die!" (Gen.3:4‑5)

For a thousand years there has been no death. Men have, in that time, become godlike in form and physique, and in mental powers. But suppose the claim is made in some quarters that this is not due to the work of an unseen God or the evangelistic endeavours of a great band of enthusiastic missionaries calling to repentance and acceptance of Christ, but is the natural and inevitable and long‑expected consequence of human evolution? Despite so many outward arguments to the contrary in our own day, the learned among men continue doggedly to proclaim the onward and upward development of our race from near‑barbarism to the acme of perfection. More than one research centre is actively pursuing investigations into the nature of life and death from the purely physical aspect with a view to ascertaining how death can be postponed or even abolished. Suppose the cry is raised that this is what has happened, that at last man has attained by means of his own efforts that state of development in which the ills of the flesh and the onset of death together with the social evils of the past can be shrugged off and man look forward to an eternal evolutionary paradise? Past history has shown that there is no limit to what man will reason and believe in the attempt to explain God away. There is no blindness so complete as the blindness of unbelief. Can it be, so the argument might run, that this is the cause of man’s obvious freedom from disease and his thousand‑year life? Can it be—is it possible—that even if God does exist, He is unable after all to cause any to whom He has once given life to go into death, that the ancient dogma of the immortality of the soul was right after all? And if it is that rebellion against God does not really bring death in its train, then surely, given sufficient determination and ruthlessness, God could be defied indefinitely? "Ye shall not surely die!" At this late stage in the history of humanity, so many millenniums after man’s creation, with so long a history of evil, it is still true that not one intelligent creature has as yet suffered the penalty of sin—eternal death. Here at the end of the Millennium every human being and every angelic being, good or evil, who has known conscious existence, is alive still. The law that eternal death is the wages of sin has still to be demonstrated in actual fact. Is it not at least possible that the great delusion which will test humanity and search out the sinful at heart, at the end of the Millennial Age, will be just that; "Suppose Satan is right after all! Suppose God is unable to inflict eternal death! He has not yet done so, to anyone! There is no evidence, as yet, that He can do so! And, if that be so, then we, refusing loyalty to God, can still be as gods! We shall not surely die!"?

Once such a thought took root in the minds of the unregenerate there would soon be an attempt to convert it into action. "We can do as we like and God cannot interfere; we shall live for ever." The challenge is thrown down before the Divine representatives in the earth and it is a challenge that cannot be ignored, for the whole fulfilment of the Divine purpose in creating man depends upon the outcome. In the Revelation passage the story is told in symbol. "And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed (encircled) the camp of the saints (holy ones) about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them." (v.9) The word rendered "camp" means a walled military encampment or barracks, or an army drawn up in array. In Acts 21:34 it is translated "castle" in reference to the Tower of Antonia, the Roman garrison in Jerusalem, built at the north‑west corner of the Temple area so that a watch could be kept upon activities within the Temple. The "beloved city" is, of course, Jerusalem the Holy. In the symbolic imagery of Revelation this allusion might well refer to the celestial ruling entity, the Church, the "camp of the holy ones," the place from which ruling authority proceeds, and the earthly representatives of Christ, the "heroes of faith" of Heb.11 administering the affairs of the world from their centre in the "beloved city." Thus the rebels challenge Divine authority and rule. This is not a literal investment of a literal city with physical weapons; the symbolic nature of Revelation rules that out in any case. This is a determined attempt to defy the authority of God and those who represent him in the world and seduce the righteous of humankind from their faith and allegiance.

There is no indication that they make any converts. It is hardly to be expected that they would. The day of probation has ended; all are well in a position to make up their minds for good or evil, and all will have made up their minds. Those who have not been influenced by the specious (misleading) arguments of the arch‑rebel are not likely to take much notice of his followers. The dividing line will therefore be clear and definite. To quote Elijah at Mount Carmel, "If the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him." (1 Kings 18:21) It can be taken that the incorrigibly corrupt at heart will stand revealed in their true colours over this matter but no one else will be misled or in any way hurt. At this point, when it is demonstrated beyond all question that nothing can ever turn these men from evil and make them sons of God, the time comes when God must turn sorrowfully away and leave them to the consequences of their choice. John saw fire coming down from heaven to devour them—fit symbol of that everlasting destruction which is the only possible end of anything and everything in which evil and sin resides and cannot be eradicated.

Do the words of Peter in 2 Peter 2 give a hint as to what might be expected? That chapter alludes to the false prophets of past ages and the descent of Divine judgment upon them, detailing the nature of their sins, and draws an analogy with the corresponding seducers of—it has generally been thought—the Gospel Age. The thought may well be correct, but even so Peter’s language is strong, almost too strong if his allusion is only to false teachers among Christians during this Age. Did he have in mind also the seducers of the Millennial Age and was his language deliberately chosen to define their position too? He certainly alludes to a similar class of evildoers in each of earth’s former ages; the fallen angels in the Antediluvian Age, the men of Sodom and Balaam the prophet of Aram (Num.23) in the Patriarchal Age, and the false prophets of Israel in the Jewish Age. Of all these he speaks in general terms describing their uncleanness and immorality, but above all of the fact that they are, first, unbelievers (2 Pet.2:1); second, hypocrites, seeking to deceive the righteous (v.3); third, presumptuous, standing up against the powers of heaven (v.10); fourth—and this is important—themselves deceived by reason of their unbelief, so that they fail to understand the power against which they fight. (v.12) The chapter is replete with strong expressions denoting judgment upon these rebels. "The Lord knoweth how...to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished" (v.9). "As natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed...shall utterly perish in their own corruption" (v.12). "To whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever." (v.17) There is much in this striking chapter that fits very well the position of those who set out at the end of the Millennium to deceive the righteous.

Unbelief—hypocrisy—presumption—blindness to the invincibility of righteousness; these are the characteristics of those who side with the Evil One in this the last challenge to God’s goodness. But they will have forgotten one thing, perhaps they never really believed it. Paul knew, and he imparted his knowledge to the men of Athens. "In him we live, and move, and have our being." (Acts 17:28) In God’s hand is the life "of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind." (Job 12:10) In a manner beyond our comprehension He has but to withdraw his Spirit, and life ceases.

That is how the end will come. In the very moment of the proud boast, of the scornful and final rejection of all that the Heavenly Father has done for them, He has but to "gather unto himself his spirit and his breath." (Job 34:14) The arrogant words, dying on the lips; the proud glance, fading out of the eyes; the suddenly nerveless body, slumping helplessly to the ground; all will give mute but eloquent testimony to the burning truth of the Divine word "the soul that sinneth, it shall die." (Ezek.18:4)

AOH