The End Of A Thousand Years

 

 

"⁷ When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, ⁸ and 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. ⁹ 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. ¹⁰ 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."

Revelation 20:7-10 

Good Morning my beloved,

 

We welcome you to worship in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is my privilege to have you here with us today. We are especially grateful for those of you who have been sharing the ministry website with all of your family and friends. Your faithfulness and commitment to share God's Word with others continues to bring about tremendous results. People are responding to God's Word! This is all so amazing. We ask you to pray that God will continue to give us boldness to speak the truth in ministry in the face of adversity in the coming days!

   

I want to let all of you know how grateful I am for all of you. We are so thankful your prayers and continue to pray for all of you. Prayer is such a powerful tool, and a mighty weapon against the adversary. And through your sharing, God continues to bring a number of people to faith in Jesus Christ. Praise God! May He continue to use you and this ministry mightily to effect change in even more lives. All for His glory! 

 

Some have asked why there is nothing of the character and nature of the Millennium given in Revelation 20. The reason is because much of this subject is covered in Old Testament prophecy as in Isaiah chapters 2, 11 and Psalm 72. It is assumed, therefore, that the reader knows and understands this so that aspect is not covered. It was then, understood that it is a time of unprecedented peace, prosperity, justice, righteousness and holiness; politically, physically, spiritually and morally. It would be understood that this is because of the removal of Satan and his demonic hosts, as well as the presence and perfect reign of the Lord Jesus Christ as the glorified Son of God in all His perfect wisdom and power. 

 

There are several doctrinal principles which can be extracted here: First, God has special purposes in the outworking of each dispensation and the culmination of each does not simply end them, but accomplishes and demonstrates specific goals and purposes that God has for history during that administration of His plan. Second, each dispensation provides new conditions and circumstances to test man from every conceivable angle. as well as provide new opportunities to reveal the character and nature of Satan and man under those different conditions. And thirdly, it also provides new ways to demonstrate God’s glory, character, mercy and grace, and divine provision for man. The Millennium is the seventh and final test which accomplishes this effect. 

 

Let us pray

 

Heavenly Father, we thank You for this wonderful Word, we thank you for your marvelous plan of redemption. We are so blessed. so grateful to be included in that plan. Thank You for this great reminder, that we are citizens of heaven, that our citizenship isn’t here. Lord, burden our hearts for the lost and those who are deceived, that we might boldly share the truth, with love and compassion, pointing them to the cross of Christ. Convict us of our own sin and conform us for the glory of Christ.

We ask and pray this in Christ's name

Amen

Today's Message: The End Of A Thousand Years

 

It is my great honor and joy to be able to minister the Word of God to you today. As we return to our study of Revelation chapter 20, this has been such a wonderful picture of our great hope for the future and what God has prepared for those that love Him. As you may have notice, up until chapter 20, everything has been pre-millennial, pre-Kingdom, now we have a vision of the Kingdom.

 

I encourage you to open your Bibles and turn to Revelation chapter 20, we will be looking closely at verses seven through ten.  If you have been following along with us, you will recall we have been studying the  last days of human history and the glorious return of the Lord  Jesus Christ. Since no one knows the day or hour except the Father, I would urge you to avoid being caught up in politics and indicators that people are often drawn to of the count down to the rapture. 

 

However, all one need do, is look at our current world and conclude that we are certainly closer than we've ever been. There are many people often become fixated on figuring out who the Antichrist is. Personally, if you are a genuine authentic Christian, you'll not be here when he arrives on the scene. That said, we should be aware of signs of the times, of the seasons in which we live. We should not however become preoccupied with them. I prefer to focus my time and attention on looking for Christ and I believe you should too. Therefore, let Christ become your focus and your heart be increasingly captivated by Him. Be absolutely in awe, and marvel at all the great things He has done. Allow yourselves to be enamored with the One Who was, Who is and is still to come.

 

I invite you to follow along with me as I read from verse seven to the end of the chapter, to set the text in our minds, as we prepare our hearts for what the Spirit of God is saying to each of us. Listen for the voice of the Lord.

 

"When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, and 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.

 

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire." 

Let's begin and look at verses 7-8. "When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, and 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."

 

Allow me to remind you again that during the Kingdom, Satan and his team of demonic cohorts were thrown into the abyss. All the ungodly will be destroyed and so all you have in the Kingdom, then, are believers. Then, at the close of the Kingdom, Satan will be released, he will come to again deceive the nations and gather them for war. We don’t know how he’s released, Scripture doesn't give us the details. We just know that he is. Gog and Magog are used appositionally to describe the nations, though they are used without any explanation; they are simply introduced as a description of the nations from the four corners of the earth. In Ezekiel, Gog and Magog are the names given the ruler from the north and his land, a territory now occupied by Russia, but according to Ezekiel these will be decisively wiped out in the Tribulation. I believe the relevance of these names symbolically stand for a rebellious and war-like people and for the nations in rebellion against God and His people who will be crushed.

 

Here the Lord demonstrates how incorrigible sin and rebellion truly are. You can remove Satan out of the system and you’ve still got depravity. Sin blinds people in every age, it's not that people are necessarily inherently bad, but everybody loves sin. Let's be honest, you can work all you want to make a cultural morality in this nation, but because they love their sin, it’s not going to change everyone. Hell doesn’t change people. Even punishment, which is intended to change people, doesn't change people. At the end of the Millennial Kingdom, you will have the same wicked, vile, depraved people with a view of killing Christ. The bottomline is, depraved people love sin. They will outwardly conform to the new covenant, but inwardly they will defy it. 

Pastors have spent countless hours, reinventing ministry, trying to make the gospel more appealing, less offensive. I have often heard many of them tout, "We need to be funnier, we need to be friendlier. We need to somehow, some way make church more appealing to the culture." To which I smirked and replied, "Perhaps you should offer some kind of signs and wonders, tell them how Jesus made you incredibly wealthy and successful. Maybe offer door prizes, like vacations or new sports cars to the lucky person who walks through the door and stay for the entire service. Or sell raffle tickets in lieu of tithing. That should do the trick." Of course, there was dead silence.. 

 

The point is, people who love the darkness, hate the light, that is why the churches are not filled and overflowing today. Christ comes  to inaugurate a perfect Utopia of peace and righteousness and health, Satan and all of his demons were incarcerated. With such a scenario how could anyone possibly reject Christ? Well, they do! You can put man in the purest, most perfect environment and he’s still going to be who and what he is.  Throughout the history of mankind, man has tried to believe that he is basically good, I believe this ends the vain hypothesis that if he just had a perfect environment, perfect circumstances, the world would be a wonderful place without evil, war and conquest.

 

That brings us to verses 9-10, "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."

 

There can be no better illustration of this than the massive numbers of people who will reject Christ and follow Satan in a literal attempt at a war against Christ as we see here at the close of his millennial reign.  Remember the end of verse 8, "the number of them is like the sand of the seashore." The broad plain of the earth will be another Garden of Eden, it will provide a glorious frame around the splendor of Jerusalem, the millennial temple on Mount Zion. It is interesting that this will be the broad plain of the earth where the final slaughter will take place.

 

In verse 10, we see that hell is not just a figurative expression for hell on earth or another word for separation from God. Beloved, allow to tell you, hell is a real, very literal place. The torture and torment of those who will find themselves there, will be everlasting. The Holy Scripture does not teach that there be an annihilation of the wicked. Scripture expressly teaches that there is a literal place in which there will be everlasting and constant torment. 

 

According to Ezekiel chapter 48, verses 10 through 22, there will be a holy allotment of land around the temple mount reserved as a place for the priests and the Levites and the servants of the temple to dwell.  It is unfathomable to me that in the presence of the Lord, in a perfect environment, in the midst of such divine splendor and holiness, that evil could possibly still exist. I am deeply grieved for those who will never know the Kingdom of God, but will instead be cast into outer darkness.

 

This is the final and fatal blow! Satan is now thrown into the same lake of fire where the Antichrist and the false prophet have been for 1000 years, a place Jesus described as outer darkness, a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth, a place of a never dying worm and unquenchable fire.

 

In Closing..

 

 If you are without Christ, whether an unbeliever, being deceived by a false religion, regardless of which one it is, this will be your fate unless you repent, unless you trust in Jesus Christ, Who is your only hope of salvation. 

 

If you are a professed Christian, yet continuing to live in the old ways before you came to Christ. I urge you to bow before the Savior, repent of your sin and ask for forgiveness, and the ways of a sinful past far behind you. Lest you too end up in hell. 

 

If you are an authentic Christians, living in obedience to Christ, I strong encourage you to be thankful, and give God the praise He deserves! For if it  were it not for God’s amazing grace this horrifying place of unending torment would be too our eternal dwelling place.  He alone is worthy of our praise!

 

May it be so..
 

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;

the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;

The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.

Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen 

 

 

 

 

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