Revelation 20:3

20:1-3 Here is a vision, showing by a figure the restraints laid on Satan himself. Christ, with Almighty power, will keep the devil from deceiving mankind as he has hitherto done. He never wants power and instruments to break the power of Satan. Christ shuts by his power, and seals by his authority. The church shall have a time of peace and prosperity, but all her trials are not yet over.

And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations {4} no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed {5} a little season. (4) Namely, with that public and violent deceit which he attempted before in chapter 12 and which after a thousand years (alas for woe!) he most mightily achieved in the Christian world. (5) Which being once expired, the second battle and victory shall be; Re 20:7,8.

And cast him into the bottomless pit; that is, into hell, his proper place: he shall no longer, or at least not till these thousand years be expired, exercise his power, as prince of the power of the air, Ephesians 2:2 , or compassing the earth, and walking up and down in it, as Job 1:7 . And shut him up, and set a seal upon him; he shall be restrained as much as one shut up in prison, whose doors are sealed up. That he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled; that till this time of God’s counsel for the quiet of his church be run out, he shall not deceive people by his old arts. And after that he must be loosed a little season; and after that he shall have a liberty again {as Revelation 20:7} for a little time.

Revelation 20:3 . Ἔκλεισε ) Erasmus adds αὐτὸν ,[215] against the MSS. and the text of Andreas himself. In general, κλείειν , to shut , may be used, not only, for instance, of a prison, but also of a captive: but here Apringius rightly construes, shut upon him , so that both ἔκλεισεν and ἐσφράγισεν cohere with ἐπάνω αὐτοῦ , as, Genesis 7:16 , it is said, ἔκλεισεν ἔξωθεν αὐτοῦ · and altogether יסגר על איש , Job 12:14 .— ἵνα μὴ , that not ) One benefit only is here expressed, but that of itself is by far the greatest, and has many great blessings joined with it. For when the chief enemy is removed, the kingdom of God gains vigour without impediment among the nations , and the great mystery of God, announced by the prophets, is finished. Revelation 10:7 . [215] AB h Vulg. oppose αὐτόν . Rec. Text has it without authority.—E. Winckler , in his Disquisitions, p. 193, etc., refutes modern Chiliasm , as an error , and that a fundamental one, by arguments drawn from the article on creation, on redemption, and on sanctificiation; and he also censures me as a defender of that error. And yet not even one of your arguments, most courteous Winckler, affects my comment: but you have gratified me. For nothing can more plainly and efficaciously demonstrate the soundness of my opinion respecting the millennium, than a comparison of my treatise with yours. Look, I pray you, to Erkl. Offenb . p. 950, etc.

I altogether differ from the things which you attribute to the Chiliasts; nay, that exegesis of mine, equally with your Disquisition, lays down the natural state of the world,—wayfaring men needing remission of sins and believing, the use of the law and the Gospel, death not yet swallowed up, etc. And do you, reader, admonished by this circumstance also, remember that the other side ought always to be heard. So far about Winckler: we return to the subject. Whilst Satan is loosed from his imprisonment of a thousand years, and the earth is harassed by the last and lowest dregs [of its inhabitants], the martyrs live and reign, not on the earth, but with Christ: then the coming of Christ in glory at length takes place at the last day: then, next , there is the new heaven, the new earth, and the new Jerusalem. Those events, which pseudo-chiliasm confounds, a true interpretation in conformity with the text distinguishes. In such a manner, I had far rather be regarded as a maintainer of the thousand years , which prophecy publishes so decidedly, than take part with the indiscriminate antichiliasts , who, under this very name of theirs, assail even the plain letter of prophecy, and trample upon truth and error alike. The mystery of God is in progress: Revelation 10:7 . That is then finished, when the beast is destroyed, and Satan is bound. That consummation approaches nearer and nearer.

(3) And cast him into the bottomless pit . . . —Rather, and cast him into the abyss (same word as in Revelation 20:1 ), and locked and sealed ( the door or mouth ) above him, that he may not deceive the nations any more until the thousand years shall have been finished; after these things he must be loosed for a little time. The sealing reminds us of the sealing employed when the wicked one had power through man’s agency to imprison God’s messengers. (Comp. Daniel 6:17 , and Matthew 27:66 .) Of the exact moment when this binding and imprisoning took place it is not needful to inquire too curiously. That which in the vision is described as the work of ä moment may in the fact and fulfilment be a very gradual work; or rather, the full manifestation of its accomplishment may be only gradually made clear. To fix it therefore, to any incident (for example, as Hengstenberg is disposed to do to the coronation of Charlemagne), is to fall into the “vicious realism” against which he rightly protests. The same applies to the duration of the imprisonment; it is not to be understood literally any more than the other numbers in the book; it symbolises a lengthened period. This period is followed by the loosing again of the devil for a short time. (See Note on Revelation 20:7 .)

3. shut him—A, B, Vulgate, Syriac, and Andreas omit "him." set a seal upon him—Greek, "over him," that is, sealed up the door of the abyss over his head. A surer seal to keep him from getting out than his seal over Jesus in the tomb of Joseph, which was burst on the resurrection morn. Satan's binding at' this juncture is not arbitrary, but is the necessary consequence of the events (Re 19:20); just as Satan's being cast out of heaven, where he had previously been the accuser of the brethren, was the legitimate judgment which passed on him through the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ (Re 12:7-10). Satan imagined that he had overcome Christ on Golgotha, and that his power was secure for ever, but the Lord in death overcame him, and by His ascension as our righteous Advocate cast out Satan, the accuser from heaven. Time was given on earth to make the beast and harlot powerful, and then to concentrate all his power in Antichrist. The Antichristian kingdom, his last effort, being utterly destroyed by Christ's mere appearing, his power on earth is at an end. He had thought to destroy God's people on earth by Antichristian persecutions (just as he had thought previously to destroy Christ); but the Church is not destroyed from the earth but is raised to rule over it, and Satan himself is shut up for a thousand years in the "abyss" (Greek for "bottomless pit"), the preparatory prison to the "lake of fire," his final doom.

As before he ceased by Christ's ascension to be an accuser in heaven, so during the millennium he ceases to be the seducer and the persecutor on earth. As long as the devil rules in the darkness of the world, we live in an atmosphere impregnated with deadly elements. A mighty purification of the air will be effected by Christ's coming. Though sin will not be absolutely abolished—for men will still be in the flesh (Isa 65:20)—sin will no longer be a universal power, for the flesh is not any longer seduced by Satan. He will not be, as now, "the god and prince of the world"—nor will the world "lie in the wicked one"—the flesh will become ever more isolated and be overcome. Christ will reign with His transfigured saints over men in the flesh [Auberlen]. This will be the manifestation of "the world to come," which has been already set up invisibly in the saints, amidst "this world" (2Co 4:4; Heb 2:5; 5:5). The Jewish Rabbis thought, as the world was created in six days and on the seventh God rested, so there would be six millenary periods, followed by a sabbatical millennium. Out of seven years every seventh is the year of remission, so out of the seven thousand years of the world the seventh millenary shall be the millenary of remission. A tradition in the house of Elias, A.D. 200, states that the world is to endure six thousand years; two thousand before the law, two thousand under the law, and two thousand under Messiah.