Revelation 12

Chapter 12. The Epiphany, the Resurrection and the MillenniumI saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. (Revelation 19:11-14)I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years. (Revelation 20:4-6)Five stupendous events are presented in the majestic panorama in the 19th and 20th chapters of Revelation. They are the glorious epiphany of the Lord Jesus Christ; the battle of Armageddon, the binding of Satan, the First Resurrection and the Millennial Reign.

The Epiphany

The EpiphanyThis is not the coming of Christ for His saints but with His saints. It is that glorious event which Enoch long ago described: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him” (Jude 1:14-15). This is that glorious coming which sounds as a deep undertone through all the prophecies of the Holy Scriptures. Joel saw it afar when he wrote “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision” (Joe 3:14). Isaiah saw it when he cried “The earth reels like a drunkard, it sways like a hut in the wind;… The moon will be abashed, the sun ashamed; for the Lord Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before its elders, gloriously” (Isaiah 24:20, Isaiah 24:23). Zechariah beheld it afar when he cried: A day of the Lord is coming when your plunder will be divided among you. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights in the day of battle. The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name. (Zechariah 14:1, Zechariah 14:3,Zechariah 14:9) Christ saw it in vision when He exclaimed, “They will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Luke 21:27). John beholds Him marching down the ether path as a mighty Conqueror. He is mounted upon a white horse, the symbol of victory and righteousness, for “with justice he judges and makes war” (Revelation 19:11). His eyes are like a “blazing fire” (Revelation 19:12) and from His mouth there passes a consuming flame like “a sharp sword” (Revelation 19:15) with which He smites the nations and destroys His foes. His vesture is “dipped in blood” (Revelation 19:13) as the symbol of victory over His enemies, and He “treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty” (Revelation 19:15). On His head are many diadems, for He has already conquered sin, Satan and death and He is about to wear the crown of all the world. He wears a number of glorious names. “Faithful and True” (Revelation 19:11) is one, and it means that all that He has promised and all that He has threatened is about to be fulfilled. The “Word of God” (Revelation 19:13) is another, and this means that He is acting as the representative of God, fulfilling His will, representing His thought and acting in His name and character. There will be no appeal from His judgment, for behind it is all the majesty and power of the Father’s throne. Another lofty name is “KING OF KINGS AND Lord OF LordS” (Revelation 19:16). He is coming now to meet earth’s confederate powers and sovereignties and He is to be recognized as the only supreme Ruler to whom every knee should bow. Above all these there is another name, known only to Himself, and it means that after all we know of Jesus there is still much we do not know. There is a mystery still hidden in His infinite heart and all that He is yet to reveal to us is far greater than even what we now know of His power and love. But this mighty Conqueror is not alone. He is simply the Leader of a host who follow in His train, for “the armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean” (Revelation 19:14). These are His translated saints. These are the souls that have been caught up to meet Him in the air and are coming back with Him along with His mighty angels to witness His public triumph and to share His millennial throne. Do not fail to notice that these triumphant hosts all come with Him from heaven and not from earth. They have already joined Him in the great rendezvous of the skies. It will be too late then to take your place. It must be taken already. Are you enrolled for the glorious company of the returning ones who are coming back with Jesus when He returns to reign? What language can describe the surpassing glory and splendid majesty of this bright epiphany! How human imagery fails! The simple and sublime description of the Apocalypse leaves us awed and overwhelmed with its silent majesty.

The Armageddon Conflict

The Armageddon ConflictOne would have thought that all the world would have been waiting with open arms to receive so glorious and beneficent a King. But lo, we behold earth’s armies in battle array to resist His coming. With strange presumptuous fatuity the kings of the earth have allowed themselves to be enrolled under the banner of the Antichrist and his wicked ally, here described as the Wild Beast and False Prophet. These represent on the one hand the godless governments of the earth and on the other her false religion. One is political, the other ecclesiastical sovereignty. Both have usurped the place of Jehovah. Both have gathered into their conflict the forces of an ungodly world. From other Scriptures it is plain that the ostensible object of their campaign is some real objective point on earth. They are not fighting in the air but they are fighting God’s people on earth. There seems no reason to doubt that the objective point of their attack will be Jerusalem and the Jews. Both Daniel and Zechariah tell us that this last conflict is to be waged against and around Jerusalem and its decisive battle is to be upon the old field of Palestine known as Megiddo, or Armageddon. The Old Testament prophets tell us that for a time the hosts of the ungodly will seem to prevail. The devoted city will fall and the horrors of a fearful sack will have just begun when the Son of God will appear from heaven delivering His people and destroying His enemies. The discomfort and destruction of the foe is described by a graphic and sublime picture. Suddenly John beholds an angel standing in the sun and beckoning to all the fowls of heaven to gather and prepare themselves to feast on the carcasses of captains and of kings and of myriads of men both small and great. We find the same vision in Ezekiel where the birds of the air are summoned to “the sacrifice I am preparing for you, the great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel. There you will eat flesh and drink blood. You will eat the flesh of mighty men and drink the blood of the princes of the earth” (Ezekiel 39:17). So terrible shall be that slaughter that it will take seven months to bury the dead after that fearful battle and the great valley of Hamon Gog will be the hideous cemetery where Satan’s last victims will leave their lifeless bones. The soldiers who have been drawn into this fearful and fatal battle will be slain and simply lose their lives, but the leaders will be caught alive and hurled into the lake of fire which now for the first time becomes the actual place of punishment for the ungodly. There is no doubt, therefore, that the actual leaders of this last battle will be living men and that their punishment will be the first awful taste of death eternal. Let us not suppose, however, that earth’s inhabitants will all perish. The millions of mankind will still live on and pass under the reign of Christ in the millennial years. It is only those who will be actually arrayed in open conflict against the Lamb who will be slain.

The Binding of Satan

The Binding of SatanNext comes the capture and imprisonment of the great Arch-leader of all these hosts of evil. Long has he kept in the background and worked out his deep-laid plans through human dupes and instruments. But now the hand of justice and vengeance reaches the actual head of all the wickedness of the ages and Satan himself is caught in the resistless grasp of Omnipotence. A mighty angel comes down from heaven and lays hold of the dragon, that old serpent, the devil and Satan. One is strongly inclined to think that this mighty angel is no other than the Son of God Himself, who “appeared… to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8). Often before had He met him in personal combat. Now He meets him for a last defeat and with the resistless grasp of almighty power He holds him helpless in His hand and binds him hand and foot and then hurls him into the bottomless abyss where he is confined in a sealed dungeon for a thousand years. What a story the history of Satan is! Even the few lurid gleams we have reflect an awful light upon the tragedy of evil and the author of sin. We behold him in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 28), an anointed cherub standing in Eden, walking up and down upon the holy mountain of God, and in the midst of the stones of fire, perfect in his ways until iniquity was found in him. We see him decked with every precious stone, the sardius, the topaz, the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, the carbuncle, and the gold, and his children come honestly by their love of jewelry. We see him with most exquisite aesthetic taste, himself a musical instrument, for the workmanship of His tabrets and pipes was prepared in him the day that he was created, and it would seem that he was just one beautiful creation of self-contained brilliancy, loveliness, melody and transcendent genius. But his heart was lifted up because of his beauty and he corrupted his wisdom by reason of his brightness and he defiled his sanctuary by the multitude of his iniquities; and so Lucifer, “How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to earth, you who once laid low the nations!” (Isaiah 14:12). Now he is the dark-winged angel of eternal night. And so we see him all through the history of the human race watching for the ruin of others, meeting the first human pair at Eden’s gates with the awful insinuation of the temptation and the fearful blight of sin. Again we behold him rearing on earth a kingdom of human ambition, pride and wickedness with which to rival the very throne of Jehovah. Next he appears meeting the Son of God at the threshold of his ministry and seeking at last to crush Him in the garden and on the cross. And when he found himself unable to destroy the Son of God or defeat His personal work, we see him through the ages assailing His people and seeking either to corrupt or destroy His church, until at last the final crisis has come in the last battle of the ages, and he is vanquished. And now for a thousand years the world is to be without a devil and the human race put on trial to show what really it will do under the fostering influences of divine love and without the instigations and influences of the great seducer. What a world, what an age that will be when Satan will tempt no more and all his deceitful wiles and dreadful power will be withdrawn from human history and the only influence outside of earth and humanity will be the beneficence and the holiness of Christ and the heavenly world.

The First Resurrection

The First ResurrectionWe are next brought face to face with the resurrection of the dead. This also is one of the transcendent and preeminent truths of divine revelation. It is something the human mind could never imagine or grasp alone. There is no precedent or parallel for it in human experience or history. Death is to reason and sense the end of all. “But it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10). “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). But there is a resurrection and a resurrection. Not equally will all the children of our human race partake of this wondrous change, for we read in the passage of “the first resurrection” and this implies that there is another resurrection. We are told “Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection” (Revelation 20:6). It is therefore for the blessed and holy only and they that do not partake of it are not blessed or holy. We are told that “The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended” (Revelation 20:5). This solemn and tremendous statement implies there will be a multitude of human beings who will remain under the dominion of death and sleep on in their silent tombs during all the glorious events of the thousand years. They will only awake from the sleep of death to face the awful scenes of the Great White Throne and the judgment of terror and destruction. Nor is it here alone that we read of the first resurrection. Our Lord Jesus Christ speaks of those who will be “considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead… and they and can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:35-36). Paul himself tells us that he was striving “somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:11). It is evidently a partial resurrection, a few from among many. Daniel tells us of a time when “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake” (Daniel 12:2), not all, but many, and then he adds that those that awake will awake “to everlasting life” (Daniel 12:2) and for those that do not awake it will be “to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). But this 20th chapter of Revelation crystallizes the doctrine of the resurrection in language so simple and direct that, as Dean Alford has forcibly said, if it does not teach the literal resurrection of the saints at the coming of Christ a thousand years before the resurrection of the wicked “then there is an end of all significance in language and Scripture is wiped out as a definite testimony to anything.” Of course, it is presupposed that all the holy dead will not rise at the very moment when Satan is bound and Christ begins His millennial reign. The description is quite in keeping with the fact that these persons had been already raised from the dead for John saw them at this point already raised and seated on thrones. Perhaps there had been several groups of resurrected ones during this period of the end, some caught up just before the tribulation, some caught up at its close but altogether united in the coming of Christ and the glory of His reign and all contemplated in one vision as those that had part in the first resurrection. The question is, Beloved, will you, will I be there? How can I tell? Thank God the answer is very plain for “If we died with him, we will also live with him; If we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:11-12). Have you died with Him? Then you will rise with Him. Have you entered into the spiritual resurrection? Do you know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, and have you been made conformable unto His death in your inner life? Then you will attain unto the resurrection from among the dead.

The Millennial Reign

The Millennial Reign"I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years" (Revelation 20:4). This is no new doctrine. Peter tells us that “the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets” (Acts 3:21). Therefore this is the burden of the prophetic vision; this is the meaning of the highest and sublimest flights of the Psalms and the prophets of the past. It is necessary to recall the visions of Isaiah, of Zechariah, of Joel, of Ezekiel. Our Lord Himself left no doubt of this blessed hope upon the minds of His disciples when He said to them such words as these: You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Luke 22:28-30) And again: I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things [Palingenesis, as the Greek word expresses it], when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. (Matthew 19:28-29) This was what the Master meant when He said “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Revelation 3:21). Beloved, we have neither language nor conceptions fully to take it in. It will mean a world without a devil, a world without a curse, a world without a prison, a hospital or a criminal, a world without a victim of oppression, the cry of outraged innocence, a tear of sorrow or a shade of night or darkness. It will mean that your mind and spirit will be restored to all the perfection of which human nature is capable and that you will be as holy, as beautiful, as happy, as wise, as strong, as glorious as He. It means that your body will never know again an infirmity or a pain, that your physical form will respond to every thought and wish of your soul and that space and distance will be annihilated and you can go perhaps as rapidly from world to world as your thought can pass today. It means that your loved and lost will be given back to your affection and every trace of sorrow be forever wiped away. It means that this sad world will be restored and all that the philanthropist, the patriot, the missionary has dreamed and longed to see will be at last fulfilled under the beneficent, peaceful government of Jesus Christ. The war drum will throb no longer. The oppressor will cry out no more. Wrong will be no longer upon the throne and right upon the scaffold, but Christ will reign in righteousness, peace and blessing from shore to shore and pole to pole and even earth’s rigorous climate, devouring sea and barren wastes will disappear, and this terrestrial scene will “rejoice and blossom” (Isaiah 35:1). And best of all it means that Christ will be with us in all His glory and in all His grace. “The dwelling of God is with men” (Revelation 21:3) and under His blessed reign and the reign of His saints the glorious gospel will cover the earth and all nations will accept the benignant scepter of the Prince of Peace and the Lord of All.