In today’s text the battle of
Armageddon is almost an anticlimax. But
it begins the next great event of human existence, the millennial rule of
Christ and His saints, a thousand years with King Jesus. Let’s dig right in.
The Conquest of the Sword
ARMAGEDDON'S SUMMONS Revelation 19:17-19
Then I saw an
angel standing in the sun, shouting to the vultures flying high in the sky:
“Come! Gather together for the great
banquet God has prepared. Come and eat
the flesh of kings, generals, and strong warriors; of horses and their riders;
and of all humanity, both free and slave, small and great.” Then I saw the beast and the kings of the
world and their armies gathered together to fight against the one sitting on
the horse and his army.
The Armageddon event begins
with the forces of evil gathering together, and God's burial detail being
summoned in preparation for the devastation.
This is one of the most gruesome thoughts in Scripture. God will gather all the world's scavenger
birds in anticipation of a 100% casualty rate of soldiers. There will be no way to bury them. The carcasses will feed the birds for months,
and the bones of every evil man will be a monument to God's final victory for
the entire thousand years of Christ's rule.
The question that has always
been in my mind is, Why does Satan bother? After all, he knows he can't win.
King David asked that same
question, Why do the
heathen rage.... Psalm 2:1
Why, indeed! Why does he do it?
·
Why does Satan fight a losing battle?
·
Why do the nations allow themselves to be deceived and follow along?
The answer to our question is
found in the character of Satan himself
Wealth is
treacherous, and the arrogant are never at rest. They open their mouths as wide as the grave, and
like death, they are never satisfied. In
their greed they have gathered up many nations and swallowed many peoples. Habakkuk 2:5
Satan cannot stand God! He would rather suffer in the abyss forever
than to not fight against God. He can't
be satisfied with anything less than total control.
He can't win; and he is
committed to taking as many people into that misery as he can deceive! It's a losing battle, and Satan's evil
character is here unmasked, and will be displayed at Megiddo.
He will be soundly defeated,
and his armies will be history! The
Bible tells us that everything he stands for is on borrowed time.
For the world
offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see,
and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father,
but are from this world. 17 And
this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone
who does what pleases God will live forever. 1 Jn 2:16-17
The Battle of Armageddon is
the event of the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Satan and his minions gathered to murder Him the first time at Bethlehem
and Calvary; there's no surprise here about their rage the second time.
And do not miss this reality;
the first arrival of God’s promise in Bethlehem produced evil's most savage
accomplishment, the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. And God used it to produce the blood which
cleanses us from all sin, and the resurrection that echoes through the universe
– He
lives, and we can too!
Even when Satan takes his best
shot, God's sovereign will is going to be the outcome. Armageddon’s message will be the culmination
of what God proclaimed since before time began:
Christ is the only overcomer of death and Hell; Satan is defeated…and
the Lord, God, omnipotent reigns!
ARMAGEDDON'S SWORD Revelation 19:20-21
And the beast
was captured, and with him the false prophet who did mighty miracles on behalf
of the beast—miracles that deceived all who had accepted the mark of the beast
and who worshiped his statue. Both the
beast and his false prophet were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning
sulfur. Their
entire army was killed by the sharp sword that came from the mouth of the one
riding the white horse. And the vultures
all gorged themselves on the dead bodies.
The battle of Armageddon is
over in a single word. All the amassed
weaponry, technology and personnel are beside the point; it is the Word of God
that settles this dispute. The sword
that goes out of His mouth is symbolism for His word:
·
Jesus spoke one word to the wind, and it hushed on the Sea of Galilee.
·
He spoke to a fig tree, and
it withered.
·
He spoke to a legion of demons
torturing a man from Gadara, and they threw themselves into a herd of hogs, and
the man was made whole.
Here, the living Word of God,
Jesus, speaks, and the battle is over.
The beast and false prophet are thrown down (violently) into hell, the place burning with fire and
brimstone.
With that word, Jesus
withdraws the breath of life from a billion-man army. The breath of life was given by God, and it
can be taken away in an instant. This is
not only a settled fact, but also an urgent warning for everyone who takes
breathing for granted. Scripture tells
us our frame of dust, these bodies in which we live, are only held together by
the will of God:
[Christ] is
before all things, and by him all things consist. Colossians 1:17
The word consist means to hold
together. When Jesus lets go,
everything comes unglued.
Following that word from
Christ’s sword, in an instant, the scavengers move in. Armageddon is over. Victory is in Jesus alone!
The Confinement of Satan
AN ABYSS SILENCE Revelation 20.1-3a
Then I saw an
angel coming down from heaven with the key to the bottomless pit and a heavy
chain in his hand. He seized the
dragon—that old serpent, who is the devil, Satan—and bound him in chains for a
thousand years. The angel threw him into
the bottomless pit, which he then shut and locked so Satan could not deceive
the nations anymore until the thousand years were finished.
The abyss is the bottomless
pit. It is what the demons feared worst
of all
The demons kept
begging Jesus not to send them into the bottomless pit. Luke 8:31
Author John Phillips tried to
imagine what Satan will be doing during his imprisonment.
There is a poetic justice in God's dealings with
Satan. Centuries ago, the evil one saw
to it that the mortal remains of God's beloved Son were shut up in a tomb and
sealed. Throughout the Tribulation era,
Satan has opened the abyss to plague mankind, once with horrible demons and
once with the recalled soul of the Beast.
Now he himself is consigned to that dark hole and sealed in by an act of
God, and there he rages in the most secure prison cell in the universe. It is the condemned cell, and he knows
it. He has his thoughts to keep him
company, and terrible thoughts they are – thoughts of the day of his creation
when he sprang mature, magnificent, and mighty from the hand of God; thoughts
of the wide world that once he ruled as the anointed cherub; thoughts of the
ways in which once he led the worship of the angel hosts; thoughts of God's
throne and his attempts to seize it for himself; thoughts of his fall, of his
entrance into Eden, of his short-lived triumph over the first human pair;
thoughts of the sentence passed upon him and of his futile efforts to prevent
the coming of the promised Seed; thoughts of Calvary and of his utter defeat;
thoughts of the fleeting moments when he brought the world to the foot of the
Beast and had seemingly triumphed at last; thoughts of the lake of fire just
ahead. He is given a thousand years in
confinement to think.[1]
Anyone who has ever seen an
interview with a Death Row inmate can
imagine this scene. There is nothing to
do but think about what might have been, and what is coming.
Satan had his chance. He was a perfect specimen – a powerful angel,
second in command in the universe only to Jesus. He decided to fight against God.
It was a bad choice.
The point needs no filling-in
here; don't make that mistake!
Satan once had the keys that
unlocked the pit to unleash havoc upon the earth. Now he's turned in his keys and he is the one
who is locked up. Because of that, on
earth, during the thousand-year (millennium)
rule of Christ there is....
AN ABSENCE OF SIN Revelation 20:3
The angel threw
him into the bottomless pit, which he then shut and locked so Satan could not
deceive the nations anymore until the thousand years were finished. Afterward he must be released for a little
while.
Dr. Phillips suggested how the
absence of sin will seem in the Kingdom,
Prosperity is evident from pole to pole and from the
new river, which now graces Jerusalem, to the ends of the earth. Poverty is unknown. Every man has all that heart can desire. There are no prisons, no hospitals, no mental
institutions, no barracks, no saloons, no houses of ill repute, no gambling
dens, no homes for the aged and infirm.
Such things belong to a past and lesser age. The bloom of youth is on everyone's cheek,
for a man is a stripling at a hundred years of age. Cemeteries are crumbling relics of the past,
and tears are rare. The wolf and the
lamb, the calf and the lion, the cow and the bear, the child, and the scorpion,
are all at peace. Jesus has come, and
the Millennium is here. The golden age,
so frequently heralded by the prophets of Israel's past, has dawned at last,
and the earth is filled with the knowledge of God. Jesus is Lord, and He rules the nations with
a rod of iron. His reign is righteous,
and the nations obey. The principles of
the Sermon on the Mount are the laws of the kingdom, and men obey them because
infractions are not allowed. Sin is
visited with swift and certain judgment.
The era lasts for a thousand years.[2]
What a day that will be!
The
Coronation of Saints
Revelation 20:4-6
Then I saw
thrones, and the people sitting on them had been given the authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been
beheaded for their testimony about Jesus and for proclaiming the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his
statue, nor accepted his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They all came to life again, and they reigned
with Christ for a thousand years. This is the first resurrection. (The rest of
the dead did not come back to life until the thousand years had ended.) Blessed and holy are those
who share in the first resurrection. For
them, the second death holds no power, but they will be priests of God and of
Christ and will reign with him a thousand years.
There are two outstanding
realities about this passage:
REWARD
There is a great reward in
store for those who have remain faithful to Christ, especially during time of
persecution.
Serving Jesus will have its
reward. William Shakespeare said: Rather
let my head stoop to the block than these knees bow to any, save to the God of
Heaven.
We have it on good authority
that those saints who remain faithfully serving their Lord, through difficulty,
and even good times, will sit with Him in Glory.
Matthew
19:28 Jesus replied, “I assure you that
when the world is made new and the Son of Man sits upon his glorious throne,
you who have been my followers will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel.
REVERSAL
In the judging that the saints
do, there are those who are judged. This
is a time for the tables to turn:
Don’t you
realize that someday we believers will judge the world….Don’t you realize that
we will judge angels? 1 Corinthians
6:2-3
What will this judging be
like? It won't be revenge; forget it,
fella! (I know -- I'd like it too, but
that is a prerogative God has reserved for Himself).
Judging is going to consist of
carrying out the will of Jesus. We will
be ministering
throughout all eternity. It would do for
all of us to practice here what we will be doing there.
The Convulsion of Sin
This is it! This is the final convulsion of sin for
eternity. After Satan has been bound up
for a thousand years, and Christ has ruled in peace over the earth, there is
one more sinful uprising. (Only one more
– He promised!)
SATAN'S RELEASE Revelation 20.7
When the
thousand years come to an end, Satan will be let out of his prison.
Can you imagine the state of
mind when Satan is let out? His hate and
solitude was mixing-together in the abyss for a thousand year bake off. Wow, what an explosion. We think his activity is bad now; wait until
he is let out of the pen. He will have
had a thousand years to plot his moves and his mayhem.
What will he do? We find out in Revelation 20.8:
He will go out
to deceive the nations—called Gog and Magog—in every corner of the earth. He will gather them together for battle—a
mighty army, as numberless as sand along the seashore.
SATAN’S RUSE - DECEPTION
He will use the same tricks
he's been using since Eden. Satan is
cunning. His chief weapon is
deception. People have been following
Satan’s lead using deception ever since Cain lured Abel into the field to
murder him with a rock.
On one occasion Norman "Kid"
McCoy, who was welterweight boxing champion in 1896, was fighting a contender
who had the misfortune of being deaf.
Once McCoy
discovered his opponent's disability, he wasted no time in taking advantage of
it. Near the end of the third round McCoy
stepped back a pace and pointed to his adversary's corner, indicating that the
bell had rung. Oh, thank you so much, said McCoy's opponent. Very
civil of you. But the bell hadn't
rung at all, and as soon as the other boxer dropped his hands and turned away,
McCoy immediately knocked him out.[3]
Satan is like that. He waits until he finds the weakness we
exhibit; when we drop our guard, he moves in for the kill.
Why is he let loose again? Someone once said: If
you tell me the reason he was let out in the first place, I'll show you why God
will let him out again. God's reason is wrapped up in the sin problem.
Gog and Magog are symbolism
from Israel's military history. They
represent the masses of enemies against God and His children. 
You ask the question, Why
doesn't God just do away with Satan, sin, and the whole lot? The problem isn’t only in Satan – it's in
us. We might ask: Didn't Jesus die to forgive our sin? Yes, but He's not going to put up with it
through all eternity! To deal with the
problem of our sin nature, there must be one more demonstration of how deep the
problem goes.
We have people today, good,
Christian people, who imagine that when Jesus comes, that will be the end of
sin, and He will reign for a thousand years in perfect harmony. That is mostly true, except, during this
millennial rule, while there will be no challenges to Christ's authority,
·
There will be children born who know nothing of first-hand
rebellion.
·
They will live without disease and crime.
·
They will truly enjoy the most peaceful time of all humanity.
“No longer will
babies die when only a few days old. No
longer will adults die before they have lived a full life. No longer will people be considered old at
one hundred! Only the cursed will die
that young! Isaiah 65:20
However, this rule of Christ
is with a rod of iron. No one will dare
to rebel. Man will be compliant out of
fear. After all, Jesus killed a billion
soldiers to end Armageddon with just one word.
As soon as they
hear of me, they submit; foreign nations cringe before me. Psalm 18:44
Say to God, “How
awesome are your deeds! Your enemies
cringe before your mighty power. Psalm
66:3
Sin will be a secret
thing. It will be – as it has been from the start
– a thing of the heart. John Calvin said, The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes
where falsehood lurks, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often
dupes itself.[4]
Jeremiah told us about the sin
that lurks in the heart:
The heart is
deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9
When Satan is released by God
at the end of the millennium, it will be for showing that even after a perfect
rule of Jesus with a rod of iron, with laws that can't be broken, the one place
that God cannot rule without permission, is a man's heart. The one thing God has granted to human beings
which he will never take back is free will….choice to obey or disobey.
And if sin is in the heart,
sin will dominate and control.
That is why God dealt with our
sin problem by going to the root – paying the death penalty. If He was to preserve our right to choose,
then He could not just force us to be good – He had
to do something about the cause.
The
demonstration will be fully visible as Satan deceives the masses of those who
have just been waiting for an excuse to throw-off the rule of Christ. They will respond to this arch-deceiver and
find out that sin's wages have not changed!
SEALED REWARD Revelation 20:9-10
And I saw them
as they went up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded God’s people and
the beloved city. But fire from heaven
came down on the attacking armies and consumed them. Then the devil, who had deceived them, was
thrown into the fiery lake of burning sulfur, joining the beast and the false
prophet. There they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Devil, Satan, the arch-enemy,
back in solitary! Exit-stage down! This is his final exit. And God has promised that this deceiver will
never again ply his trade.
There are two questions left
over about hell --
Is hellfire and
brimstone a reality or symbolism?
The Bible says exactly what it means to say. However, the possibility
of symbolism exists. If it is symbolic,
then it is worse than
if literal!
Symbols are only representative. Reality is always broader. The broader a punishment, the worse.
Satan had better hope for the heat!
Why did God make such
an awful place like this for man's fate? The fact is that God didn't do
that! This place was not made for man.
“Then the King
will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into
the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons. Matthew 25:41
The fact is that God only
sends people to this place who desire to follow Satan. He has made it clear to us how to escape hell:
¨
Give control of your life to Jesus by confessing your sins, and being
forgiven.
¨
Believe in Jesus who forgives your past, and promises life for your
future.
¨
Trust Jesus with everything you do, say, think, and hope-for.
Don't even listen to Satan's
lies, and you won't go there.
Martin Luther, when the devil came to him and asked him to open the door of his heart so that he could come in and discuss some very important matters with Him, said
I don't have the keys to the door; God has them. Ask Him if you wish. That is a good answer. It is like the one that says, Satan came knocking at my heart's door. I sent faith to answer. There was no one there.
Beloved, that is the best that
can be said about Satan, he won't be there.
Much better to spend a
thousand years with Jesus!
In the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen!
Title and other images: Pixabay.com
Clifton Fadiman, Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, (Boston, Toronto, London) pp. 376-377
You chew on that as
you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day! 
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