The millennial rule of Christ and His saints begins
with a battle – Armageddon!
The Conquest of the Sword
ARMAGEDDON'S SUMMONS
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. Revelation
19:17 - 19 (NLT)
The
Armageddon event begins with the forces of evil gathering together, and God's
burial detail (buzzards) 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 His enemy’s 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. David asked that same question,
Why do the heathen rage.... Psalms 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 (NLT)
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. And this world is fading away, along with
everything that people crave. But anyone
who does what pleases God will live forever. 1 John 2:16 -
17 (NLT)
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 – when Jesus came to
planet earth the first time it produced evil's most savage accomplishment, the
crucifixion of God’s Son...and God used it to produce the blood which cleanses
us from all sin, and the resurrection that echoes triumph through the universe!
Armageddon will produce no less than the companion to
that last advent – but there will be a new message, He has overcome death and Hell, and
Satan is defeated! Even when
Satan takes his best shot, God's sovereign will is going to be the outcome.
ARMAGEDDON'S
SWORD
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. Revelation 19:20 - 21 (NLT)
The battle
of Armageddon is over in a single word.
All the amassed weaponry, technology and personnel are beside the
point. It is the single, powerful and
unequivocal 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
one time and it ceased whipping up 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 Jesus, the living Word of God, 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.
He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. Colossians
1:17 (NLT)
The word consist
means to hold together. When Jesus lets go, everything comes
unglued.
And, immediately the scavengers move
in. Armageddon is over. Victory is in Jesus, alone!
The Confinement of Satan
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. Afterward
he must be released for a little while. Revelation 20:1 - 3 (NLT)
The abyss is the bottomless pit. It is what the demons feared most:
John Phillips, an author, 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.
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
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. Revelation
20:3 (NLT)
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!
So we have the Conquest of the Sword, Confinement of
Satan, and…
The Coronation
of Saints
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 forehead 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. Revelation
20:4 - 6 (NLT)
There are two outstanding realities about this
passage:
REWARD
There is a
great reward in store for those who have remained faithful to Christ,
especially during time of persecution.
Serving Jesus will have its reward. William
Shakespeare (1564-1616) said, Rather
let my head stoop to the block than these knees bow to any, save to the God of
Heaven.
Saints who faithfully
serve their Lord, through difficulty, and even good times, will sit with Him in
Glory.
“Yes,” Jesus replied,
“and 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. Matthew 19:28 (NLT)
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? 1 Corinthians 6:2 (NLT)
What will this judging be like? It won't be revenge. That 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.)
And
finally….
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
Can you
imagine the state of mind when Satan is let out? His hate and solitude mixed 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?
SAME RUSE
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. Revelation 20:8 (NLT)
He will use the same tricks he's been using since
Eden. Satan is cunning. His chief weapon is deception. He waits until he finds our weakness, then,
when we drop our guard, he moves in for the kill.
Why is he let loose again?
SAME REASON
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.
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. Revelation 20:8 (NLT)
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
is sin is not only in Satan – it's in us.
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 (NLT)
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.
Say
to God, “How awesome are your deeds! Your enemies cringe before your mighty power. Psalms 66:3 (NLT)
Sin will be a secret thing. It will be – as it has been from the start – a matter 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.[3]
Jeremiah told us about the sin that lurks in the
heart:
“The human heart is the most deceitful
of all things, and desperately
wicked. Who really
knows how bad it is? Jeremiah 17:9 (NLT)
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 as long
as 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
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. Revelation 20:9 - 10 (NLT)
Devil, Satan, the arch-enemy, back in solitary!
Exit-stage down!
Final exit. Satan is banished
forever! Hallelujah!
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?
I believe 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. And 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 state?
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
(NLT)
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.
¨ Believe in Jesus.
¨ Trust Jesus.
Don't even listen to Satan's lies, and you won't go there.
The great German reformer, Martin Luther dreamed 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. He said he answered this way: 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!
Glory to the Father, and to
the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
