Revelation 20

Revelation 20 … At the beginning of the Millennium, the fallen angel Satan, who throughout all ages has been the nemesis of faith and the progenitor of sin and evil, is bound and put in the abyss, the place where demons have been securely kept out of the way. He’ll remain there during the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. John, in his vision, continues to record revelations as he sees them. He sees faithful martyrs, who have been raised to heaven, and those who withstood the pressures of the one-world economic system; these will also reign with Christ.

Verse 5 points out that all these belong to the first resurrection, composed of believers who have placed their faith in Christ. They are all greatly blessed and experience the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9) and will never suffer a second permanent death (v.6). After the thousand years are complete, Satan is released and amazingly, there will still be some on earth who were perhaps “closet atheists or closet agnostics,” who will be exposed and condemned. One wonders where they come from since Satan’s influence was put out of the way during all that time. The answer lies in the human heart, which is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9) and its sinful mind, which is “hostile to God,” and “does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.” (Romans 8:7). The demise of these unfaithful is apparently supernaturally accomplished (v.9) and Satan is quickly dispatched to the lake of fire. Following this is the Great White Throne judgment. It is a judgment of the unsaved; those who have not accepted salvation freely given in Christ Jesus and who have rejected the love and grace of God. These represent the second resurrection of the unsaved, who are all condemned at the Great White Throne and sentenced to the lake of fire. It is an undeniably terrible thing to fall under the wrath of God, something the Scriptures have consistently warned about (Hebrews 10:31).