Revelation 20
Satan bound for a thousand years; the martyrs reign with Christ; then Satan loosed, defeated, and cast into the lake of fire — and the great white throne.
Summary
Chapter 20 contains the most disputed passage in the entire book and one of the most disputed in the entire New Testament: the millennium. The three major Christian positions on the thousand years — premillennialism (Christ will return before the millennium and reign on earth during it), postmillennialism (the church will progressively Christianize the world and Christ will return at the end of a golden age), and amillennialism (the thousand years is a symbolic description of the present age of the church between the resurrection and the final return) — have generated enormous theological controversy and continued to do so. The key exegetical question is whether the first resurrection (20:4-5) is a literal bodily resurrection of martyrs before the millennium or a spiritual resurrection (conversion and participation in Christ's life) experienced by the church throughout the present age. The amillennial and postmillennial readings take the latter view; premillennialism takes the former. All three positions have been held by serious biblical scholars, and the passage alone does not resolve the debate.
The Gog and Magog of the brief post-millennial battle (20:7-10) are drawn from Ezekiel 38-39, where Gog of the land of Magog is the leader of a northern coalition that attacks Israel in the last days and is destroyed by divine intervention. In Revelation the names have become symbolic for all the nations gathered against God at the end — they are from the four corners of the earth, a universal rather than specifically northern force. The fire from heaven that destroys them recalls both Ezekiel 39:6 and the fire from heaven that the false prophet performed as a sign in chapter 13, but this fire is divine and direct. The great white throne judgment (20:11-15) is the most compressed final-judgment scene in the New Testament. Earth and sky flee from the one seated on the throne — the dissolution of the present created order. The books are opened, and also the book of life. The double criterion — each one according to his works, but also the book of life — has generated as much theological discussion as any passage in the epistle tradition. The lake of fire receiving Death and Hades as personified powers is the book's climactic symbolic statement: death is not the final reality. The second death is.
- Revelation 1Chapter 1 is the prologue and the first vision in one.
- Revelation 2Chapter 2 contains four of the seven letters to the churches of Asia Minor.
- Revelation 3Chapter 3 completes the seven letters.
- Revelation 4Chapter 4 marks the transition from the seven letters to the visions proper.
- Revelation 5Chapter 5 is the theological heart of the entire book.
- Revelation 6Chapter 6 opens the first six of the seven seals.
- Revelation 7Chapter 7 is an interlude between the sixth and seventh seals — a deliberate pause before the final seal is opened, answering the question the sixth seal raised: who can stand? The chapter presents two related visions.
- Revelation 8Chapter 8 opens the seventh seal and begins the trumpet sequence.
- Revelation 9Chapter 9 contains the fifth and sixth trumpets — the first two of the three woes.
- Revelation 10Chapter 10 is an interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets, parallel in structure to the interlude in chapter 7.
- Revelation 11Chapter 11 continues the interlude and then resolves the trumpet sequence.
- Revelation 12Chapter 12 is the pivot of the entire book — the structural centre around which everything else in the cosmic drama turns.
- Revelation 13Chapter 13 introduces the two beasts that are the dragon's primary agents in the world.
- Revelation 14Chapter 14 provides a series of visions that function as previews of the end — parallel announcements of what is coming before the bowl sequence delivers it.
- Revelation 15Chapter 15 is the shortest chapter in the book and functions as the preparatory scene for the final and most intense series of judgments.
- Revelation 16Chapter 16 is the uninterrupted bowl sequence — the most relentless series of judgments in the book, without the interludes that interrupted the seals and trumpets.
- Revelation 17Chapter 17 is one of the most explicitly decoded visions in the book: an angel shows John a vision and then explains it.
- Revelation 18Chapter 18 is a sustained lament — the longest single scene in Revelation — mourning the fall of Babylon-Rome in the tradition of the Hebrew Bible's oracles against the nations.
- Revelation 19Chapter 19 provides the positive counterpart to chapter 18's lament.
- Revelation 20Chapter 20 contains the millennium — the only passage in the Bible that explicitly describes a thousand-year reign of Christ — and the final judgment before the great white throne.
- Revelation 21Chapter 21 is the great resolution.
- Revelation 22Chapter 22 completes the vision of the New Jerusalem and closes the entire book.