Satan’s Doom (Revelation 20:7-10)

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1. In literature, movies, or television, who do you think is the all-time worst villain or bad guy?

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2. What will happen after the thousand-year reign of Christ and His saints? (Rev.20:7)

3. How is the Abyss described? (Rev.20:7)

4. What will Satan do right after His release from the Abyss? (Rev.20:7-8)

5. Where will Satan go to find followers? (Rev.20:8)

6.What is Satan’s goal in gathering people at this point? (Rev.20:8)

7. How did John describe those who will be deceived by Satan? (Rev.20:8)

8. In John’s vision what battle plan did Satan follow in his war against God?(Rev.20:9)

9. What is special about the place where the people of God gathered?(Rev.20:9)

10. How did God defeat the armies of Satan? (Rev.20:9-10)

11. Where was Satan dispatched after his defeat? (Rev.20:10)

12. What is Satan’s, the beast’s, and the false prophet’s final destination?(Rev.20:10)

13. What will Satan, the beast, and the false prophet experience in their final destination? (Rev.20:10)

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14. When are we prone to lose confidence in God’s power and authority over Satan and evil?

15. How can we draw encouragement from the certainty of Satan’s doom? 

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16. What is one simple way you can remind yourself of God’s certain victory over evil?

 

Commentary

When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, (20:7) As previously noted, Satan and his demon hordes will be imprisoned in the abyss for the duration of the Millennium, in which the Lord Jesus Christ will rule with unopposed sovereignty. They will not be permitted to interfere in the affairs of the kingdom in any way. Satan’s binding will end, however, when the thousand years are completed, and he is released from his prison to lead a final rebellion of sinners.

To review briefly, Scripture teaches that no unsaved people will enter the kingdom. Only the redeemed from among the Jewish (Rev.12:6, 13-17; Isa. 60:21; Rom. 11:26) and Gentile (7:9-17) survivors of the Tribulation will go into the kingdom in their normal, physical bodies. The perfect environmental and social conditions of the Millennium, coupled with the lengthened life spans of those physically alive (Isa. 65:20), will cause their children to proliferate. 

Though the initial inhabitants of the millennial kingdom will all be redeemed, they will still possess a sinful human nature. And as all parents have done since the Fall, they will pass that sin nature on to their offspring. Each successive generation throughout the thousand years will be made up of sinners in need of salvation. Many will come to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But amazingly, despite the personal rule of Christ on earth, despite the most moral society the world will ever know, many others will love their sin and reject Him (Rom. 8:7). Even the utopian conditions of the Millennium will not change the sad reality of human depravity. As they did during His incarnational presence on earth, sinners will refuse the grace and reject the lordship of the King of all the earth. That is not surprising, since even the perfect conditions of the Garden of Eden were not sufficient to keep sinless Adam and Eve from rebelling against God. The issue regarding salvation is never lack of information (Rom. 1:18-20); it is love of sin (John 3:19). Those who openly rebel will face swift judgment (2:27; 12:5; 19:15; Ps. 2:9), including the withholding of rain on their land (Zech. 14:16-19). But enough unrepentant sinners will be alive at the end of the Millennium for Satan to lead a worldwide rebellion.

When Satan is loosed, he will provide the cohesive supernatural leadership needed to bring to the surface all the latent sin and rebellion left in the universe. He will pull together all the rebels, revealing the true character and intent of those Christ-rejecting sinners and making it evident that God’s judgment of them is just. Satan’s desperate wickedness and violent hatred of God and Christ will not be altered by his thousand years of imprisonment in the abyss. When he is released, he will immediately set about fomenting his final act of rebellion.

[Satan] will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog, and Magog, to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore. And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. (Rev.20:8-10)

At the end of his thousand-year imprisonment, Satan will come out to deceive the nations (Rev. vv. 3, 10; 12:9). As noted above, Satan’s imprisonment cannot alter his God-hating nature. In fact, he will hate Christ more than ever. And as also noted above, Satan will find fertile soil in which to sow his seeds of rebellion. Many unsaved descendants of those who entered the millennial kingdom in their physical bodies (all of whom will be redeemed) will love their sin and reject Christ. They will be as unmoved by the peace, joy, and righteousness of the Millennium as sinners were by the devastating judgments of the Tribulation (Rev.9:20-21; 16:9,11,21).

The actual strategy and method of Satan’s deception is not revealed, but it will succeed in duping the unregenerate people of the world into revolting against the Lord Jesus Christ. His deception, however, will fit within God’s purpose, which, as noted above, is to manifest His justice when He destroys the rebels. Satan’s actions are always under God’s sovereign control (Job 1:12; 2:6), and his gathering together of these wicked rebels will be no exception. Satan will collect the deceived nations from the four corners of the earth (Rev.7:1; Isa. 11:12), an expression referring, not to a flat earth, but to the four main points of the compass: north, south, east, and west. In other words, the rebels will come from all over the globe.

John gives these enemies of the King of Kings the symbolic title Gog and Magog, naming them after the invasion force that will assault Israel during the Tribulation (Ezek. 38-39). Some believe that Ezekiel 38 and 39 describe this battle at the end of the Millennium. There are, however, significant differences that argue against equating the two events. Ezekiel 39:4 and 17 describe the invaders perishing on the mountains of Israel, but according to Revelation 20:9 the rebels at the end of the Millennium will be destroyed on a “broad plain.” Also, the language of Ezekiel 39:17-20 seems to be describing the same event depicted in Revelation 19:17-18. Finally, the events of Ezekiel 38-39 fit chronologically before the description of the millennial temple given in chapters 40-48, while the battle depicted in Revelation 20:7-10 takes place after the Millennium.

The name Gog appears to be used in Scripture as a general title for an enemy of God’s people (the Septuagint uses it to translate “Agag” in Num. 24:7). In Ezekiel 38-39, the name Gog describes the final Antichrist of the Tribulation. Most likely, then, Gog is used in verse 8 to describe the human leader of Satan’s forces. Some believe the people known as Magog to be the descendants of Noah’s grandson of that same name (Gen. 10:2). They later became known as the Scythians and inhabited the region north of the Black and Caspian Seas; will gather together for the final war in human history.

Amazingly, John saw that the number of the rebels will be like the sand of the seashore—a figure of speech used in Scripture to describe a vast, uncountable multitude (Gen. 22:17; Josh. 11:4; Judg. 7:12; 1 Sam. 13:5; 1 Kings 4:20; Heb. 11:12). As previously noted, the ideal conditions of health, prosperity, safety, and peace that will prevail during the Millennium, coupled with the long-life spans of its inhabitants, will lead to a massive population explosion. Incredibly, vast numbers of those people will join Satan in his final act of rebellion against God.

The earth’s topography will have been drastically reshaped by the catastrophic events of the Tribulation (Rev.16:20; Zech. 14:4, 9-11). That will allow the rebel forces to come up on the broad plain of the earth and surround the camp of the saints and the beloved city. Parembolē (camp) is used six times in Acts to describe a Roman military barrack (Acts 21:34, 37; 22:24; 23:10, 16, 32). The saints will be encamped around the beloved city of Jerusalem (Ps. 78:68; 87:2), which is the place of Messiah’s throne and the center of the millennial world (Isa. 24:23; Ezek. 38:12; 43:7; Mic. 4:7; Zech. 14:9-11), enjoying the glorious presence of the Lord Jesus Christ (Isa. 24:23; Jer. 3:17) when the attack comes.

Like Armageddon a thousand years earlier (Rev.19:11-21), the “battle” will in reality be an execution. As the rebel forces moved in for the attack, fire came down from heaven and devoured them. They will be swiftly, instantly, and totally exterminated. Sending fire … down from heaven is often the way God judges sinners (Gen. 19:24; Lev. 10:2; 2 Kings 1:10, 12; Luke 9:54). Satan’s forces will be physically killed, and their souls will go into the realm of punishment, awaiting their final sentencing to eternal hell, which will take place shortly (Rev.20:11-15). Nor will their evil leader escape his fate: the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone. There he will join his cronies, the beast, and the false prophet, who by that time will have been in that place of torment for a thousand years (19:20). That those two humans are still there after that time refutes the false doctrine of annihilationism.

Hell is a place of both mental (Dan. 12:2; Matt. 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28) and physical torment (14:10-11; Matt. 25:41; Mark 9:43-44; Luke 16:23-24). Those sentenced to that terrible place will be tormented day and night. There will not be a moment’s relief forever and ever. Scripture explicitly teaches that hell is eternal. The same Greek phrase translated forever and ever is used in Rev.1:18 to speak of Christ’s eternity; in Rev.4:9-10, 10:6, and 15:7 of God’s eternity; and in Rev.11:15 of the duration of Christ’s reign. Unbelievers will “be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night” (Rev.14:10-11). Jesus taught that the punishment of the wicked is as eternal as the eternal life of the righteous (Matt. 25:46). He also taught that hell is a place of “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), “where their worm does not die” (Mark 9:48). Second Thessalonians 1:9 teaches that the destruction of the wicked in hell stretches throughout all eternity. 

Believers are already citizens of God’s kingdom (Phil. 3:20; Col. 1:13; 1 Thess. 2:12), blessed to be in fellowship with the King. But a glorious future inheritance awaits them, “imperishable and undefiled [which] will not fade away” (1 Pet. 1:4).

THINK ABOUT THIS: Christians should not expect the nations to get better and better, until Christ’s coming scarcely causes a ripple in the pool of an already good world. Christ’s return will be a cataclysmic reversal of all this world has known. Revelation warns that at the end of the age lawlessness and rebellion against God will grow to towering heights. How can Christians prepare themselves with a hope that is realistic, idealistic, and optimistic?