The millenium (Ch. 20)

Chapter 20.

Overview

The “thousand years” has generated more debate than almost any other detail in the book - and it’s worth knowing upfront that sincere Christians read this chapter differently (before Christ’s return, after it, or symbolically). Here is one reading, offered as one attempt among several serious ones, not the final word:

• The vision opens with Satan bound at the cross - Jesus’ own victory, not a future event.
• That binding gives the church room to share the gospel. The church reigns during this time - but not the way earthly kingdoms rule.
• Satan is then released for one last confrontation, pictured through the imagery of Gog and Magog’s final assault.
• Only then comes the resurrection and final judgment, before everyone spends eternity either with God or without him.

On this reading, the thousand years is another way of naming the whole age between Christ’s first and second comings - and its point isn’t a victim mentality but confident, active testimony. The rest of the book has already spent many chapters showing that the church rules without violence, fear, or manipulation. Even acting from apparent weakness, the church reigns.

Two details worth explaining

Why “beheaded” (Revelation 20:4)? In the Roman world, execution by torture over a long time was the common death sentence - a quick death by beheading was normally kept for people of higher standing. Naming the martyrs this way is a quiet but deliberate statement: in their deaths, they were treated as people of rank.

What do the “first resurrection” and the “second death” mean (Revelation 20:5-6)? Revelation never speaks of a “second resurrection”. The first resurrection is a share in the risen life of Christ, “the First… who died and came to life again” (2:8): it begins when someone is born anew, and after death it goes on as reigning with him, until the one bodily resurrection at the end. Whoever has a share in it is out of reach of the second death, the final separation from God. Some commentators, and premillennial readers generally, take the first resurrection instead as a bodily raising of the martyrs.¹

Key images

• The first resurrection - the reign of those who died faithful, sharing Christ’s rule now, before the bodily resurrection at the end.
• The lake of fire - the final exclusion from God’s presence, the “second death” the letters promised the faithful would never taste.

Read the fuller explanation →

Sources