tam wrote:
You believe the thousand years began at Christ's ascension (two thousand years ago)?
Yes, I believe the Millennium of Revelation 20 to have begun... well, actually, not at His ascension, but after His completed work on the cross -- Jesus said, of course, "It is finished." I believe this to be the correct understanding of Revelation 20. The thousand years of Revelation 20 is a symbolic number denoting fullness and completeness rather than strictly 1000 (and not 999 and less or 1001 and more). It's used here in the same sort of context in which the cattle on the thousand hills being the Lord's in Psalm 50 -- the cattle on
all the hills, of which there are far more than literally 1000, are His. Or like Psalm 105, where we read that God has remembered His covenant forever... the word which He commanded to a thousand generations -- to
all generations. Or the thousands of thousands of Revelation 5, meaning, figuratively, the complete completeness of the angels around the Lord's throne. Or -- our some of our friends here will love this -- the one hundred and forty four thousand of Revelation 7, which actually is immeasurable by man in numbers, it is the completeness of each of the twelve (a Biblical number denoting completeness itself) tribes of God's Israel.
How long does the millennium last? Well, again, it began with the completed work of Christ on earth. Revelation 20 follows immediately after Revelation 19, which celebrates the triumph of the One who is “King of kings and Lord of lords� (v. 16), whose robe was dipped in blood (v. 13), and who now rules the nations with a rod of iron (v. 15). But when does it end? Revelation 20 presents it as continuing until the end of the age, when after a brief uprising by Satan, the final judgment takes place (20:7–11). That means that the evil one is bound from deceiving the nations until just before the conclusion of salvation history.
Why, then, does Revelation use the expression a thousand years? In terms of biblical numbers, ten represents fullness, and a thousand is ten times ten times ten, hence fullness times fullness times fullness. It seems to equal a vast number of years without being a precise chronology of human history. Nowhere else does Scripture limit the binding of Satan and the success of the church’s mission to a specific period of time before the end of the age. Moreover, there are other places in Scripture where the word thousand is used without being a literal number. In Psalm 50 this same number is employed in a different context, where it says that God owns “the cattle on a thousand hills� (v. 10). This could not mean that the only thing God owns in His creation is one thousand hills, for “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof� (24:1). It is an expression for fullness. It is the same in Psalm 68:17, where the chariots of God are said to be “twice ten thousand.� It is highly unlikely that God has only twenty thousand active angels at his behest, for Christ on the cross could have called down twelve legions of angels (Matt. 26:53), which is far more than twenty thousand. The message in Psalms 50 and 68 is one of fullness, and it is the same in Revelation 20. One day, the fullness of the elect will be brought into the church, and then the end will come. It is not a matter of literally one thousand years, but of God’s secret timing as to the gathering of His people into union with Christ, however long that may take from our human perspective.
tam wrote:
Yet before the thousand years begin, the following has to have happened:
He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. 3 He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended.
Has Satan been bound for the last two thousand years in the abyss, locked and sealed in that abyss to keep him from deceiving the nations?
How can that be true when Peter said:
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Or James:
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Or Paul:
If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And if I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven it in the presence of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan should not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.
Peter makes it very clear that the devil is prowling around looking for someone to devour. If the Adversary is prowling around, he is not bound and chained in the abyss. None of the above sounds as though the devil is bound and chained in the abyss OR that he is no longer able to deceive the nations. Just the opposite in fact.
And Revelation 12 speaks about the devil (the dragon) having gone down to the earth, to make war against those who belong to Christ (since he cannot go after Christ).
When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about [Jesus].
Ah, yes, the binding of Satan. A point of great controversy.
Specifically, Revelation 20:3 relates that he is bound from deceiving the nations during this period. Something happens to Satan’s ability to keep the nations of earth blinded from seeing who God is, and what His Gospel means for them. As a result of Christ’s finished work in dying on the cross, in rising from the dead, in ascending to the Father, and in being crowned on the throne of glory, Satan lost his power to deceive the untold millions of pagans, whom he formerly kept blinded to God’s saving truth. In this way, he has been bound for 2000 or so years, and for now (though maybe not for much longer), such is still the case.
The ancient story of Job may give us some important insight into this massive reduction of Satan’s power over the heathen nations. Job 1 portrays Satan as possessing the ability to come into God’s immediate presence along with other angels, or “sons of God� (v.6). He used this place of power to cause great harm to Job. But according to what Christ says in the Gospels, Satan lost that privileged access to the heavenly courts as a result of the incarnation and work of Christ. In Luke 10:18–19, the seventy disciples return with great joy from their successful mission in preaching the gospel, healing the sick, and casting out demons. Christ then explains how they were able to accomplish these wonders: “He said to them, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven’� (v. 18). Jesus explains Satan’s fall in terms of Christian ministry: “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you� (v. 19).
It is significant that the first beings to recognize the incarnate Christ, according to the gospel of Mark, were demons. Mark 1:24 and Luke 4:34 are among the passages that show the demons crying out in terror that the Holy One of God has come to torment them. Jesus explained that when He cast out demons by the Spirit of God (Matt. 12:28–29), it meant that the kingdom of God had come. In His work, He was binding the strong man (that is, the devil), who formerly had been keeping people in the dark and painful prison of unbelief, sin, and certain judgment.
After the Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection, and immediately before His ascension back to the Father, He commissioned the church to “go … and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit� (28:19). They would be able to do this because of Christ’s victory over Satan, who had long blinded the nations, for Jesus said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’ (v. 18). Satan’s illegitimate power over the nations has been taken from him, and placed into the hands of Christ. Now the Christian church can do its work; it can engage in successful mission all over the world, bringing the good news of freedom from captivity to those who had long been in chains because of sin and unbelief.
Colossians 2:14–15 makes it clear what happened to the powers of evil through Christ’s ministry, especially what He accomplished on the cross: “(He) cancel(ed) the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.� This indicates that wicked powers were defeated in principle at the cross of Christ. When Jesus purged all of our sins on Calvary, something happened to Satan. The evil one lost his authority to keep people back from God. He was bound by what Jesus did.
The missionary journeys of Paul into Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome were successful in turning the once-darkened nations to the saving light of God in Christ on the basis of the binding of Satan. Paul says in Acts 28:28, “Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.� That has been true of all Christian missions and evangelism from that day to now.
So again, although the evil one still has limited power in a fallen world, it is far less than what he had when he was able to bind and blind all nations outside Israel. And believers can still overcome even Satan’s limited power, for James 4:7 commands us, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.� Revelation 12:11 testifies of the embattled saints that “they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.� Revelation 20 presents the Millennium as continuing until the end of the age, when after a brief uprising by Satan, the final judgment takes place (20:7–11). That means that the evil one is bound from deceiving the nations until just before the conclusion of salvation history.
