Fr. Stephen De Young: Okay, we’ll go ahead and get started. We’re going to get started in just a moment. We will be picking up at the beginning of chapter 20 in the Revelation of St. John. I’m not going to spend a ton of time recapping because we’re actually—believe it or not, chapter 20 is the beginning of the last cycle. We’ve talked about how the Apocalypse is sort of arranged in these cycles. It’s probably—I know it was a little bit ago for us in real time, even though only about a week for the people later listening to this recording—but it was kind of obvious at the end of chapter 19 that we were getting to the end of a cycle, because we saw the return of Christ and the defeat of the beasts and them getting fed to the birds and the animals and all that. That clearly was sort of a wrap-up point.

But we are actually about to, in chapter 20, start a new cycle, and this is important because not understanding this sort of cyclical pattern and understanding that chapter 20 is another cycle has caused no end of odd theological speculation, but also sold a lot of books for Tim LaHaye and Jenkins—what was his first name? Was it Jerry Jenkins? Something like that. —sold a lot of books for some people. And Hal Lindsey and John Hagee and any number of other people. So, not just to pick on them in particular, but this whole idea that the book of Revelation that we’ve several times now critiqued as “here is a series of events that are all going to unfold in the future in order” is what has sort of produced this idea, the big wall charts and the “here’s what this represents, here’s what this represents, here’s these things happening in the future.” [Laughter] But as we’ve seen over and over again, St. John is again and again saying these are things soon to take place. He’s talking to the people of his day. What he’s saying is still relevant to us today, but it was just as relevant to the people he was originally speaking to. It wasn’t just sort of: “Here, I’m going to lay out this book in a mysterious code that no one will understand until 2,000 years or more from now.” [Laughter] Very clearly not what he’s doing.

And we’ve seen how there are these repeated cycles where it sort of starts over, where it runs back to, like in chapter 12, the birth of Christ, and then moves forward from there in a cycle; and these cycles of sevens that you’ve seen over and over. So chapter 20 here, as we being to talk about the millennium, this is the beginning of another cycle. It’s the beginning of a new cycle. So that means we’re going back in time here at the beginning.

That said, and we’ll say more as we go forward, this— I mean, I haven’t spent a lot of time, deliberately, going and critiquing all of the different pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib rapture stuff and all that. I think we’ve seen the whole “trib” part isn’t really there in that sort of literal sense. But I don’t think it’s worth a lot of time to get caught up in all the ins and outs of all those things. I’m trying to do just sort of a positive presentation of: Here’s what it says, positively. [Laughter] But there are places where we do have to at least interact a little because of the way terms have been used and that kind of thing. So unless there’s any questions or comments or ruminations left over from previously, we’ll go ahead and pick up in chapter 20, verse one.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things, he must be released for a little while.

We have this image of the devil being bound in the bottomless pit, where— We’ve also talked about how, when these cycles go through, St. John grabs elements from the previous cycle and kind of develops them more. So where was the last time that we saw the devil thrown down? Hint: I mentioned it a minute ago. Chapter 12. Remember that that was at the birth of Christ. The birth of Christ happens, and then sometime during Christ’s ministry—we talked there about St. Andrew of Caesarea connecting that to the gospel reading we actually read Monday night, where Christ says, “I saw Satan cast down from heaven.” We see him here again, the devil and Satan. Last time we saw that phrase together was chapter 12. So all this is connecting it back to those events in chapter 12. This is why I say we’re going back and starting a new cycle now.

And this language of him being bound is connected to several things. That language, of an angel coming and binding him and throwing him into the pit, is language that’s used, for example, in the book of Enoch that we’ve talked about a few times, for Azazel, who’s sort of the devil figure there, who gets captured and bound. This is the language Christ uses in the synoptic gospels when he talks about “you have to bind the strong man before you can pillage his house.” And this is depicted in our icon of the resurrection on Pascha, when Christ is harrowing Hades; he’s depicted grabbing Adam and Eve’s hands and pulling them out of the grave, and beneath the kicked-down doors is this dude who’s supposed to be the devil, who’s chained up. [Laughter] This is the imagery that’s being used here.

What he’s particularly said what this binding is about—because obviously this isn’t literal; there aren’t literal chains somewhere in a literal bottomless pit somewhere on earth that you can go find on GPS coordinates. [Laughter] But what this is indicating according to the text here is that he’s no longer able to deceive the nations. So this means that what this primarily does is change the status of the relationship between the nations and God. Where do we see that kind of language elsewhere in the Scripture? Well, Psalm 82 (or 81 in the Greek), that talks about—that ends with “Arise, O God, and judge the earth, for you will inherit all the nations,” because the gods of the nations have been defeated so they can no longer lead them astray; now they’ll come back to the true God. Christ references this in Matthew 28 in the Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been granted to me. Therefore, go make disciples of all nations,” that Christ has taken that authority over all nations, not just Judea or Israel but everything. So this is depicting that same event, again from a different perspective.

That’s where we’re picking up now. So he’s going back, starting a new cycle, picking up at that point, from the pit, from the point we saw where St. Michael chucked the devil out of heaven in chapter 12, with the teaser here, that “after these things,” after a period of time, he’s going to be released again. “These things” being the thousand years. It’s a plural “these,” so in the Greek it’s “after these,” these years.

So the other issue that’s caused some consternation with this over the centuries is that it’s a thousand, and wanting to take that number literally. But chilios in Greek, that we translated as a thousand can mean a thousand; it also can mean a really big number. It isn’t weird or inaccurate or an error that the Bible used round numbers. Everybody used round numbers. The Roman Empire used round numbers: A centurion did not have a hundred people under him. [Laughter] So this isn’t trying to give— “A thousand” is like— Well, I used to say, “It’s like a million dollars.” Now it’s like “a billion dollars!” Inflation! It’s just: huge number, where somebody will say, “If I had a billion dollars,” that doesn’t mean that if they had 999,999,999, they wouldn’t do what they were about to say; they’d have to have exactly one billion. [Laughter] But it’s an idea: a long time. A long time, an age.

So there is an age that begins with Christ during which the devil has his authority over the nations stripped for him is what’s being depicted here. So this is an element of the messianic age, the age that begins with the coming of Christ and that will end with the end.

Q1: If God’s got the devil where he wants him, why would he be releasing him?

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Well, we’ll see!

Q1: [Laughter] Oh, okay!

Fr. Stephen: We’ll see. Verse four:

And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the Beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

So this also, again in this cycle— This cycle is giving us part of the backdrop to the previous cycle. Why wasn’t the dragon just doing stuff directly? Why was he doing this through an image of himself? And an image of that image? Well, because he’s tied up; he’s restricted in what he can do, so he’s sort of working through agents. But also— So you notice, there’s the pronouns here in verse four… Now every time I say the word “pronouns,” I get worried somebody’s going to get mad at me… The pronouns here don’t have any referent. “I saw thrones and they sat on them”—“they” who? Doesn’t say.

Q1: My Bible straightened it up by saying: “And seated on them were those…”

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Right. But there’s no— And it’s not talking about, in the next verse, “Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded…”

Q2: Is this supposed to be the…?

Fr. Stephen: They’re not the ones who are seated, so somebody is seated on these thrones and judgment is committed to them, and then…

Q2: Well, is that supposed to be the twelve?

Fr. Stephen: This is a reference to, as we’ve seen over and over again with St. John and the Apocalypse, one of the texts of the prophets, in this case Daniel, Daniel 7 in particular. In Daniel 7—because remember the Beast language he’s drawing from Daniel 7, that’s the vision of the Beast, and then the Son of Man comes and is enthroned, and then the beasts are judged in Daniel’s depiction. And the language there is “And thrones were set.” [Laughter] And it has this passive voice. St. John is here mimicking the language of Daniel to call you back to that. He’s now calling your mind back to the enthronement of the Son of Man. So where is the enthronement of the Son of Man? This is Christ’s ascension. That’s the point where we’re at now: Christ’s ascension.

Why is it “thrones,” plural? Well, this is a big argument in Jewish circles in the Second Temple period, about why it’s “thrones,” plural. [Laughter] But in Daniel it’s pretty clear it’s one for the Ancient of Days and one for the Son of Man, but that just sort of moves the question of what you do with those two figures. So for us all the language—the Son of Man there in Daniel 7 comes riding on the clouds of heaven; Christ ascends into heaven on a cloud—this is directly connecting these things. The feast of the Ascension is not where we say farewell to Jesus until he comes back. The feast of the Ascension is the feast of Christ’s enthronement at the right hand of God in heaven.

So in Christ’s ministry and through his death and resurrection, the devil is bound; he receives authority over the nations: Matthew 28, where he said that, is right before he ascends into heaven. So this now is his ascension. That’s talking about the thrones. So Christ now is in authority; the devil’s not. Christ is in authority and enthroned, and then once he is enthroned, then the souls of those who—the martyrs. These are the martyrs; these are the saints. They come alive, and they live and reign with Christ for the thousand years, for this era of time, this age. So in between Christ’s ascension and his “return,” his appearing, in between that period he reigns over the earth, and the souls of the martyrs and the saints come alive and rule with him. These are why the elders had thrones. Yes, sir.

Q3: I’ve heard it said in Orthodox churches that this world that we live in is ruled by the devil. It sounds like this doesn’t completely go with Revelation.

Fr. Stephen: Right. [Laughter] So right now demonic spirits have authority over whatever we give them authority over. So you could invite a spirit of chaos and destruction into your life, because you have free will—less so once you’ve invited one of those spirits into your life! but you can—but they do not have any authority in and of themselves is the idea.

So the idea here is that, going back into the Old Testament and the Tower of Babel, the nations are kind of sent on their way, and they’re out there not doing so swell in terms of what they’re doing and how they’re living. This is what St. Paul is saying in Acts 17 when he goes to Athens. He says from one man, God made all the peoples of the world, appointed their boundaries and their times and their seasons, but he did this not because he didn’t care, but he did this and he ordered all these things so that people might look for him and seek after him and find him, and all too often that didn’t happen, but St. Paul goes on to say now God is calling you all back in Christ. That’s the shift that happens here.

Verse five: “But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.” So who are “the rest of the dead” here? The dead who aren’t the saints. So it’s not that everyone rose from the dead at Christ’s resurrection. We believe Christ’s resurrection is the beginning of the resurrection, but we don’t all rise from the dead that way. So the righteous, the saints, they come alive again and are ruling and reigning with Christ. What does it mean to “come alive” when you don’t have a body? Well, what is life according to Christ in St. John’s gospel? “This is life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

So St. John of Damascus says physical death is the separation of the soul from the body; spiritual death is the separation of the soul from God. We tend to, being kind of materialists, think that, well, physical death is “real” death, and spiritual death is some kind of metaphorical thing. But the perspective of the Scriptures is the exact opposite, that spiritual death is real death, and physical death is actually a consequence of spiritual death, that our soul being cut off from God, it’s sort of like tying a tourniquet around a finger: eventually it dies and falls off.

And so this is what it’s getting at [when] it says they’re alive: they’re with Christ; they’re in the presence of God. So they are sort of fully alive. Even though it looks to us like they died, they were martyred, they were killed in this horrible way, they are in some sense more alive than we are—not only still alive, but more alive. Whereas the others obviously aren’t there in the presence of God.

But when the time comes at the end of the age, everyone gets resurrected, and that’s why what happens to the saints—and note it’s referred to here as the first resurrection. The first resurrection; the second resurrection is the resurrection of everybody at Christ’s appearing.

Verse six: “Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection; over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years.” Why is it important to say, “Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection”? Well, because if you just saw someone get martyred, they don’t look all that blessed and holy; it looks like a horrible thing has happened to them. Remember Job’s friends. [Laughter] They weren’t coming and calling Job blessed. So even though these horrible things have befallen them in the sight of other humans, these people are really blessed and holy, the word for “holy” here being the word “saint.” These are holy ones; these are saints, and blessed.

And notice—we have the reference here to the second death, and the first resurrection and the second death. So what’s the second death?

Q2: Spiritual death?

Fr. Stephen: Spiritual death, not physical death but spiritual death. So physical death happened to them, but spiritual death is not something they have to fear. And notice: “They will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.” So not only are they reigning with Christ, not only is Christ sharing his rule over the world with them, they’re also serving as priests. Why is this important? What do priests do?

Q2: They intercede.

Fr. Stephen: They intercede. So if any of your friends ever ask you, “Where do you see the intercession of the saints, the departed saints, in the Bible?” here’s a go-to verse. That’s literally what it says. It’s what it says the saints in glory are doing, is serving as priests and sharing in Christ’s reign.

Verse seven: “Now when the thousand years have expired,” when we get to the end of the age now, “Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea.” So Gog and Magog are not China and Russia.

Q3: They are in this book. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Really?

Q3: China and Mongolia.

Fr. Stephen: China and Mongolia. Okay, well, there you go. [Laughter] Still afraid of the Mongolians after all of these centuries. They have condors there, I mean! [Laughter] But, yeah, it is not actually China and Russia. Gog and Magog are figures in the Prophets and in Amos and other prophets of the Old Testament. They are sort of the embodiment of the nations who are opposed to God, to Israel’s God and therefore Israel. Gog in the Greek of Amos is identified as the king of the locusts, so he’s clearly not being identified with some particular human guy.

So where have we seen something very much like this? The previous chapter. We talked about the battle of Armageddon, Har Mo’ed, all the armies come and lay siege to the mountain of God. This is just the next cycle; this is just a very short one, because we’re coming to the end. So this is the same battle. This is not yet another— It’s not like the— It’s not like Return of the King where there’s, like, five final battles, one after the other. [Laughter] This is not the harrowing of the Shire. This is the same battle, described again in brief.

Verse nine: “They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city,” right, the mountain of God; this is the same battle. “And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. The devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the Beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” So they go into the lake of fire. As we mentioned last time, the lake of fire I believe comes up here and it comes up in St. Matthew’s gospel—that’s taken from the book of Enoch; that’s where that imagery shows up, as that’s the place where— And it’s explicitly said to have been this place of condemnation created for the devil and his angels, by Christ himself. And so, again, this is not something that was created for humans who misbehave, and this is not— The demons there are not poking people with pitchforks and stuff; the demons there are under the condemnation.

So the idea that we’re going to see unfold here is that humans who are hardened in rebellion the way the demons are, and unrepentant, end up sharing their fate, based on their refusal to repent and to love God, because God will not force them to love him against their will. But to cut yourself off from God is to cut yourself off from life. That’s why this gets called second death; that’s why— So the image of weeping and gnashing of teeth that we get is not imagery of someone being tortured; that’s imagery of madness. The idea is these people have cut themselves off from their own humanity; they’ve cut themselves off— And there’s just all these images to describe that, because this is something horrible that we don’t want to contemplate, that’s presented here as the fate of the demonic powers and potentially the fate of humans, because I will reiterate, once again: it does not say that there’s a certain number of humans who share this fate; it merely opens the possibility that a human who refused to repent and became like the demons would share this fate.

Verse 11: “Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away and there was found no place for them.” So now we have the throne of God. This is our last judgment.

And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened, and another book was opened, which was the book of life, and the dead were judged according to their works by the things which were written in the books.

This idea of these books is a tradition. There’s versions of this going back as far as we have literature. In the earliest references we have in the Ancient Near East, it’s references to the heavenly tablets, but the idea is that there are spiritual beings, angelic beings, whose job is to sort of record everything everybody does on earth. We’ve already talked about the idea of the book of life and names being written in it, so I won’t go through all that again, but— other than to say— Well, yeah, I have to do this. [Laughter] I was trying to just be nice, be positive for once. I’m going to have to do another “Sorry, Calvinists.” [Laughter]

So again here, notice the judgment is according to works, which everything in the New Testament—we’ll leave the Old Testament aside for the moment. Everything in the New Testament says we’re going to be judged according to our works. The one time that we get a description in the gospels from the mouth of Christ himself of the last judgment, it’s the parable of the sheep and the goats. Why do sheep go to heaven and goats go to hell? It’s because what they did, specifically how they cared for those in need or didn’t. There’s not a test: “What did you believe? Did you have the right doctrines? How often did you go to church?” It’s how you lived your life and what you did in it.

Yeah, I mean, I don’t know what to say more than that. I won’t name him here, but when I see someone… There’s a prominent Evangelical scholar whom I get asked about a lot who, in an interview about the book of Enoch, was asked if there was anything heretical in the book of Enoch, said, “Yeah, it says that we’re going to be judged according to our works.” And I about fell out of my chair and said, “Well, I guess the gospel of St. Matthew is heretical, then? And the book of Revelation is heretical, then?” Like… This is basic Christianity stuff, right?

So how can someone read this and not see it? Well, I’ll give you an example. And this is an example I am getting from some very smart people, literally some of the best and brightest Calvinist theologians there are today. This is their explanation for this scene. They say, “Ah, see? Look closely. The books were opened, but then another book is opened—which is the book of life.” And they say, “See? Yes, everybody’s works are exposed, but if your name is written in the book of life because you’re one of the elect”—because these are Calvinists, remember?—“then don’t pass go, do not collect $200: you just get to go to heaven no matter what the books say about what you did. And then if you’re not in the book of life, if you’re not one of the elect, well, you’re definitely a sinner and so then you get condemned for what’s in the books.”

So if you’re not a Calvinist, it seems to be way harder to get around this, but even that doesn’t really work, because, again if you read closely, they stopped with, “Oh yeah, then the book of life gets opened.” But then it says after the book of life is opened, “and the dead were judged according to their works by the things which were written in the books.” There’s nothing in there about being in the book of life allowing you to bypass this judgment.

Q2: How do we know when the names are written in the book of life? What if they’re written in the book of life: after the judgment, write them in the book of life?

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Well, right. Yeah. So the objection then is… Or what’s been drilled into people’s heads from a Protestant culture and a Protestant background is that if you just take this for what it says, that we’re judged according to our works, “You’re teaching works righteousness! You say you earn your salvation by doing good stuff!” And, see, what’s happened there is there is this schism, this split, we’ve talked about before, between ideas, like theological ideas and beliefs, and what you do, as if these are two separate things that can operate independently; as if you could truly believe all of these correct doctrines and then also lead an unrepentantly sinful life at the same time, as if that’s a thing that’s possible to do. I will also say, it’s also not possible to do vice-versa. It’s not possible to lead a righteous and holy life and believe all kinds of bizarre heresies. Why? Because leading that righteous life is what gives rise to the ideas. Ideas don’t produce behavior; behavior produces ideas. Things become believable to us or unbelievable to us. Things sound ridiculous to us or sound true to us based on our way of life, our way of being in the world, our experiences. That’s why they always go together. So it’s not possible to have either of those mismatched cases.

I just said that in quasi-philosophical terms, but Christ says it in very simple terms. “A good tree brings forth good fruit; a bad tree brings forth rotten fruit. Therefore, by their fruits shall you know them.” That how we live and what we do, what’s in our hearts is connected. Christ says in another place, “From the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” The words that come out of our mouth are coming from somewhere and are revealing what’s going on there. That’s why St. James, when we’re reading St. James’ epistle can talk about us being judged by the words that come out of our mouth.

So this is not a question of— When we’re talking about this judgment according to works, it’s not “God has a list of all the good stuff we did, and God has a list of all the bad stuff we did, and if the one list is longer than the other, that decides.” That’s not how this works. But all of those works and all of those words, including works of repentance, I might add— One of the commandments is to repent. You can sin and as long as you repent, you are keeping the commandments. That’s why the Scriptures can talk about several people who “kept the whole Law” successfully, because the Law includes sin-offerings! [Laughter] The Law includes commandments of “if you have stolen from someone, you need to repay them five times what you stole.” So if you have stolen from someone, and you go and you repay for what you stole and you make amends, and you offer a sacrifice, then you have kept the Law; you have kept the commandments. You don’t have to never sin to keep the commandments.

All this is taken into account, but when you look at the list of who you were in this life, how do we determine who you really were? It’s not some secret identity, some inner self. We’re modern people. Psychoanalysts have convinced us all that we have this internal self, which is kind of nonsense. [Laughter] And “oh, what is that?” “Who can know? Who really knows? I need to define myself…” That list of everything we said and everything that we did, that’s who we are. That’s who we are, and that’s what this is talking about, that that list, those are going to reveal who we are. That’s what this judgment is talking about.

It’s more like… We think criminal court. “Here are the charges against you. How do you plead?” This is not like judging a criminal court, and this is not competitive, like judging a dance contest, where you’re judging people against each other. This is like I’m picking out a fruit tree sapling to go plant in my yard. I’m going to look at it; I’m going to examine it. I’m going to look at things to determine: Is this a good solid tree; is this not? And the tree can’t argue with me. Even if it could talk, it couldn’t say, “No, no, no, pay no attention to my bark! I’m really super healthy!” [Laughter] Because it is what it is. So this is reality-based.

The sheep and the goats in Christ’s parable are either a sheep or a goat. The goat can’t sit there and say, “No, no, I’m a sheep, really. Listen: Baa-aa-aa!” [Laughter] You are one or the other, and what they had done in their life revealed which they were. So that’s the kind of judgment that’s being talked about here.

Q1: Does poetry count?

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] In terms of trying to defend yourself?

Q1: In terms of good works.

Fr. Stephen: Oh! [Laughter] Producing good and beautiful things in the world is a good thing.

But so that’s what we’re talking about here.

Verse 13: “The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one according to his works.” So this is everybody who ever lived. Doesn’t matter where you ended up, bottom of the ocean, Hades, everywhere. [Laughter]

Verse 14: “Then death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, and anyone not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” So notice: it’s just sort of this last note, this afterthought: Oh yeah, potentially, death, Hades, the beasts, the devil, they’re all chucked in there. The demonic spirits are just chucked in there. Oh yeah, and any human who sort of joined up with them. That’s where they’ll end up, too. Again, that is not the purpose of this; it’s not the goal of this.