Notes of An Address
Revelation 20, to 21:1-8
Part 2
We were speaking of its winding up, and all this leads to the eternal winding up. What we have said thus far has to do with time.
There is a blessed day coming for this poor world, but not for those who reject the gospel.
“His name (that is the Saviour’s name) shall be great to the ends of the earth.”
That time of blessing is brought about, not by the grace of God, but, by the righteous judgment of God. That King comes in the nineteenth chapter as a warrior, and “in righteousness doth He judge and make war.” All this is near at hand.
This remarkable book (Revelation) begins and ends as no other book in Scripture does:
“The time is at hand.” “Things which must shortly come to pass.”
That is what this book is about—what is at hand. The long-suffering mercy of God keeps it back, but that is all. There are no scriptures to be fulfilled, prophetic or otherwise, before the day of the grace of God is closed. There are prophetic scriptures, and they have their place, but not now.
The day of God’s patience will come to a close, and His throne and Himself assume another attitude towards the earth. You ask what that attitude is, both of Himself and His throne? His throne becomes what it never has yet been: a throne of judgment! and upon that throne He Himself sits, not as a Saviour-God upon a throne of grace, but as God the Judge, as one scripture says, “God, the Judge of all,” and as one speaks, he feels the blessedness of having to do with the Word of God, and our individual portion in Christ. Everything in heaven, everything in earth, and everything in hell—all is laid bare and laid bare in this book!
“They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” There we are, all glorified. What a scripture that is! How simple how definite; how positive. You and I and every other redeemed one at that time will partake in that life, and reign with Christ a thousand years! We know our future. But this is not the height of our blessing as Christians by any means; this is display.
When at home in the Father’s house, we are there as His children, but when He manifests us, it is not as His children, but as His sons. It is relationship that is enjoyed in the Father’s house. It seems very precious to think of finding ourselves in the Father’s house as His children.
Then we get a remarkable thing: that being, that wicked being, that mighty being, for such a one is Satan, bound, chained for a thousand years, is liberated, but it is for a little season. It is the last test to which man is put, or if you please, the last test to which the world is put. There has been that thousand years’ reign under the supremacy of the Lord Jesus and His saints. All creation has rejoiced in the deliverance He brought and maintained for a thousand years.
Why was Satan bound for a thousand years? Why not consign him at once to his eternal abode? God has yet some work for Satan to do, and for that purpose He liberates him. What is that purpose? To test man again. Man has lived under the blessed reign of peace and righteousness in the earth, and now that wicked one is liberated again that God may use him in making manifest those who have been really converted, and those who have not.
Nothing external converts a man. You may take him to Mount Sinai, and give him to see and hear the lightnings and thunderings which make him tremble from head to foot, and entreat that the word be not spoken any more—all filled with terror—but that doesn’t convert him. Here has been this reign of peace and righteousness and blessing; we read in the prophets and other scriptures how full the blessing will be, but thousands of them have not been converted, and so this enemy is liberated and he goes out. God makes this test, and he gathers these unconverted ones (I use that term so as to make it simple), and “they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.” He gets them together, as we learn from the preceding verse, a multitude as the sand of the sea, and gathers them about and against God’s people.
I think it exceedingly important to know that nothing outside man converts him. I do not say he is not responsible by that which is outside, but it doesn’t convert him. It has to be a work in the soul, and that is the work of God’s grace by His truth and His Spirit.
Look at Nebuchadnezzar as an instance of it. He sees those cast into the furnace of fire walking, and a fourth one, and he saw them come forth out of the midst of the fire with not a hair singed; the only things that were gone, as the result of the fire, were the cords that bound them. In a general way, Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged God as the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. He is an unconverted man. God takes hold of him later to humble him, and there is a work in his soul and he becomes a worshipper.
That is very important for us to remember in preaching the gospel: the need of God’s grace in the soul—in the heart.
Well, fire comes down from heaven and consumes them. That is, divine judgment overtakes them—those unconverted ones—living perhaps some of them nearly a thousand years. There will be very little death during that thousand years—there is death, but it is a rare thing, and it is when the government of God comes in in a special way for sin. Now divine judgment overtakes those enemies. What a change fore them to go from that blessed earth, that scene of righteousness, that place of peace, overtaken by divine judgment—an awful thing for them.
The great deceiver himself is not shut up again for a time, but forevermore. I speak with reverence in saying, God is done with him!
“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone.”
(To be continued)