Notes of an Address
Revelation 20; to 21:1-8
We have in this passage the solemn winding up of everything in earth and in heaven; the saved and the lost, that is, it is an eternal winding up—the end of all things.
What a comfort it is to have from the Word of God and so from God Himself, light about all that is past, and all that is present, and all that is to come—good and evil alike.
Our chapter begins with what we call “the Millennium,” a very blessed season of a thousand years of rest and peace, and the reign of righteousness upon the earth. That great source of evil, Satan, himself who is engaged, as we know, only with himself (for his whole being is antagonism to everything that is of God right down to this very session of which we read, and he has marred everything) is bound, Every witness and testimony that God has set up in the earth, save one, he has marred. Of all the witnesses that God has had, there is but one, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has been able to withstand this enemy of God, and enemy of man, called here “the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan.”
In order to bring about that happy state of things in the earth, Satan is imprisoned. An angel comes down from heaven with a great chain in his hand (of course, it is all figurative language), and he lays hold of this being—this dreadful being—this destroyer—deceiver— “who deceiveth the whole world.” One of his characteristics is that he is a deceiver, and that characteristic is manifested in a special way in our own day, deception; and we and the world all have to do with Satan as the serpent, the beguiler, the deceiver.
What can preserve any from his deception? Just one thing, dear friends, and that one thing is thought continually less and less of. hardly anywhere is it owned, its divine authority. What is that one thing? THE WORD OF GOD. This only can preserve from the deceptions of Satan whether it be an individual, or whether it be a nation.
The angel lays hold of Him, binds him and casts him into the abyss, called farther down “prison,” for a period of a thousand years; the abyss there is not his final abode. We have that farther down in the chapter. He is bound and out of the way, no longer to be feared in either of his characteristics.
The next thing is a very blessed sight!— “Thrones, and they sat upon them.” They are those we have read of once and again in the former part of this book beginning with the fourth chapter. There are two classes as it were, added to them, brought into the same blessing, priests unto God and to Christ, and what a change for them! They are two classes of martyrs; of these we read in the 6th chapter; the other class we find in the 15th chapter. We do not speak now of detail, but one judges the former class of martyrs for the truth, suffer in the early part of the power of the Antichrist.
The second class suffer later under another power; we do not speak of details, but of the wondrous change for them. Their past is a past, and their present is a present, and what is that present? That present is, they are all glorified now, and they live and reign with Christ a thousand years.
It is remarkable, this is the only scripture of the length of what we call “the Millennium,” and I think in this chapter it is mentioned six times—a thousand years. A thousand years of happy association with Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords. What a change for them!
Saved or unsaved, a change, an everlasting change is about to overtake us. The gospel warns people that a change is going to overtake them; how little men think of it!
When and how will that change take place for the people of God, and what is its nature? There is very, very little in Scripture about it, but that little, dear friends, comprehends much!
We wait for the coming of the Lord when we shall be introduced by that coming into all that we are heirs of as the children of God. Scripture says,
It is the coming of the Lord Jesus that introduces us into that; in the meanwhile, (I speak of it for the refreshment of my own spirit as well as yours), those departed ones are with Christ, and with Christ they wait, but O, how different the circumstances in which they wait. We have very little conception of what those circumstances are in which they wait with the Lord.
The Lord Himself is waiting, you know; in this very book we read, “kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.” “Kept the word of My patience.” In that way, patience will come to an end by the realization of that for which patience has waited, both on the part of believers and on the part of the Redeemer. How happy and blessed is the portion of the child of God, whether he be here or there.
This is a little aside from what is before me; it was rather the latter part of the chapter and the opening of the next, but there is this happiness and the earth rejoicing under the sway of that once despised and rejected One. He has come as the “Sun of righteousness with healing in His wings,” that is, has come in that way at the time of which this scripture speaks.
He doesn’t come in that way at all when He comes to gather His saints to be with Him. Then He leaves the world in a worse plight than before. How is that? Because He, the Holy Spirit, who now restrains, and in whose energy and grace the gospel is preached, is gone, and the poor world is left in sadder and darker circumstances than before, and only to reap at length the fruit of rejecting, not only Christ here on earth, but Christ presented as a heavenly Saviour and the giver of eternal life.
Darkness follows the light, in the way of the government of God, and earth now enters as it were, her hour of travail when the time comes of which we speak. How little the poor world in its wisdom, pride and folly, knows there is a day at hand of which the Saviour, when He was here said, The like of which never has been known nor ever shall be, since the day God created man. This is what awaits this poor world.
(To be continued)