Revelation chapter 20 is a very,
very controversial passage. So I decided that we'll take
our time going through it. And then today, actually, will
be the last message on this until we come back after the first
of the year. Because Debbie and I will be
gone next weekend. And then on the 25th, we won't
have service. So January 1st. And I'm like this, too. We forget
things. But you have the lesson there
in front of you. But I thought about this. It's so controversial
because people do not use the proper rules of scriptural interpretation. That's one of the reasons I wrote
that book, Rightly Dividing the Word, Rules for Interpreting
the Bible. There are rules. In fact, I had
a program on that this morning, our television program. showing
those books of self-examination. And we know that the scripture
to the natural man and woman, the scripture is a closed book
to the natural person as we're naturally born. And therefore,
one of the rules of interpretation is the rule of revelation. It's
got to be revealed. Got to be revealed by God. Christ
said that over and over again. He told Nicodemus, you must be
born again or you cannot see the kingdom of God. You don't
have spiritual eyes to see it. You may have 20-20 vision when
it comes to looking at this world. And you may have a mind that
can understand the complexities of astrophysics or the complexities
of the law, or the complexities of any kind of science, or something
like that, or philosophy. But the mind to understand and
embrace the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ the gospel
of salvation and how beautiful and how glorious and how how
vital how precious it is we don't have that by nature that has
to be given by God Christ said in Matthew chapter 11 nobody
knows the son but the father and he to whom whomever the father
reveals him and the son reveals him and that it's by revelation
but the fact that it's by revelation does not suspend our responsibility
to seek the Lord in his word. And in doing that, use the responsible
rules of interpretation. In other words, it's not check
your mind at the door and leave your brain at the door and then
try to get it by some kind of an osmosis or some kind of a
feeling or something like that. You know, when we go into the
scripture we have rules of context, we have rules of typology, we
have, you know. So, one of the controversies
that revolves around this is the term a thousand years. The
thousand years, you all have heard the term millennium, haven't
you? The millennium. The millennium
is derived from a Latin word, which means a thousand. That's
what it is. That's not a biblical word, in other words, but the
word thousand years is here. I think it appears maybe five
or six times in the first six verses of Revelation 20. And
the question arises, is he talking about a literal thousand years,
calendar years, Or is this thousand years symbolic of just a time
period that God has set for the accomplishment of these things?
And that's the controversy. The thing about it is, when you
go into the scripture, we know that numbers are symbolic. We've
talked about how the book of Revelation is set in the order
of sevens. Seven churches, you remember.
Seven visions. Some people believe they are
consecutive visions. This happens at the first of
the New Testament age. This happens at the second. I
believe that what he's talking about is seven different views
of the same time period. That's what I believe. And I
believe I could prove that through scripture. But it's based on
seven. Well, seven is a symbolic number.
It means perfection. It's the perfection of a finished
work. Six is a symbolic number. That's
the number of man, the number of falling short, the number
of sin. That's why you have the mark of the beast, 666, the triple
six. That shows that man at his best
cannot attain righteousness. That if you're going to be a
seven, that is one who stands before God righteous, the only
way you're going to be that way is by the grace of God in the
Lord Jesus Christ, and that's it. Nothing added. Nothing you
do can make you a seven. Nothing I do can make me a seven.
It's all what Christ did. The seventh day Sabbath, that's
what that was a picture of back in the old covenant. Man was to work six days and
he rested on the Sabbath. And that seventh day Sabbath
is a picture of our spiritual rest in the seven in Christ who
did all the work. for my righteousness, for my...
His blood is the complete forgiveness of all my sins. And I don't add
anything to it. If I add baptism to it, I corrupt
it. If I add anything I do, even
my faith. Now listen to me. Yes, we were
to believe, but our faith is to be in the seven. Christ. You see, our faith is not in
our faith. Our faith did not make the difference. in being
saved and being lost. His righteousness makes the difference
in being saved. Our faith is in Him. And that's
not just splitting hairs, you see, because I'll tell you now,
we're going to be talking about Satan, the binding of Satan here.
And like I said, I'm going to go back over these things when
we come back, because I know we'll all forget them. And we
have to be reminded. But you know what? I thought
about this. You know, this is really appropriate for this season.
People are thinking about the Christmas story. And when you
think about the Christmas story, you think about the babe in the
manger. But that's not really the Christmas story. You know,
a lot of people get upset, you know, say that Christians shouldn't
celebrate Christmas because it has its roots in paganism and
all that. And even the name Christmas means
Christ, you know, they say it means Christ mass. Now there's
some differences on that. which means the death of Christ.
And they refer back to the paganism of Catholicism who tried to change
the pagan celebrations and make them religious so that they could
get more pagans into the church. And that probably all happened.
But listen, that means nothing to me. It means nothing to you. I celebrate the death of Christ
every day, don't you? And you wanna know why? Because
his death is my righteousness before God. His death satisfied
God's justice. His death paid my debt to God's
justice for all my sins. Now in order to die, what did
he have to do? He had to become incarnate. He
had to be born of a virgin. His name shall be called Jesus.
What was the angel talking about? He's talking about the humanity
of Christ, the God-man. His name shall be called Jesus,
for he shall save his people from their sins. And his name
shall be called Emmanuel, which being interpreted as God with
us. And way back in Genesis chapter three and verse 15, what was
the prophecy there of the seed of woman? That's what Christ
was called, the Messiah. In prophecy, he was called the
seed of woman. Well, woman has no seed. It's
the man that has the seed, but he wouldn't be born of woman.
Born of man, he'd be born of woman by the Holy Spirit, that
holy seed. You see, that's Christ. And what would he do? He would
bruise the head of Satan. Now that's what the Christmas
story is all about. It's not about a baby in a manger. And
though we celebrate that, we celebrate his incarnation, we
celebrate his birth, but it doesn't stop there. You see, people have
a tendency to think about Christ and salvation and religion in
segments. Today, we're celebrating his
birth. Next, in the spring, we celebrate
his resurrection. It's all together. To celebrate
his birth without understanding why he was born And what he accomplished
in his earthly life as a God-man is ludicrous. It really means
nothing. I mean, it may give you good
feelings. It may stop you from arguing for a day or two, you
know, peace on earth and all that. And of course, we've talked
about that, how Christ didn't bring peace on earth between
men and nations. He brought peace on earth between
God and his people. That's what he did. And so Luke
chapter 2. He's the salvation of his people.
now what did he accomplish well that's what revelation twenty
is about and what you have here is the you remember we have seven
visions in revelation this is the beginning of the last vision
the seventh vision here in chapter twenty and what you have here
is a that uh... that uh... the the vision before
this the sixth vision showed you the last age which was the
new covenant gospel age from this viewpoint of Christ conquering
the beast, the false prophet, and Babylon. And each time we
came through a vision, at the end of the vision, what did you
see? You see the second coming of Christ and the destruction
of the world. Now this last vision is seeing the last days from
the viewpoint of Christ's power over the red dragon, Satan. Remember,
Satan is symbolized in the red dragon. That's not a horror film. That's a reality. He's called
the red dragon because of his ferociousness, because of his
voracious sinful appetite, his destructiveness. And Satan's
weapons in his destruction is deception, false religion. We always refer, for example,
to 2 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 3. If our gospel be hid,
it's hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world
hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest they
see the light of the glorious gospel of God in Jesus Christ."
And so, whenever God brings a sinner, By the power of the Holy Spirit
to Christ, what does he do? He frees him up from that darkness
and deception. As Paul wrote in Colossians 1,
he translates him from the kingdom of darkness, that's the kingdom
of Satan, into the kingdom of God's dear Son. So this is what
we're seeing, the last of the seven visions given by the Lord
to the Apostle John. And this is describing the whole
New Covenant age, and that's from the first coming of Christ
to his second coming. For example, in the sixth vision,
we saw the destruction of the nations of the world. Well, here
in the seventh vision, we're going to see those nations again
coming up. Well, according to the sixth
vision, they've already been destroyed. So how could they
come up again? Now the reason I say that is
that shows you that this vision, beginning in chapter 20, could
not be an historical succession that happens after this. Because
the nations have been destroyed, and here they come back up again.
I believe it's in, well, I can't remember which verse it is here.
We'll get to that later, though. But listen to what he says. Look
at verse one. He says, I saw an angel come down from heaven.
Now I believe this angel is the messenger of the covenant. Always
remember when you see the word angel you have to determine it
by its context. Is he talking about an angelic
being? One of the elect angels? Is he
talking about A minister, remember back in the seven churches, the
pastors of those churches are called angels. Not because they
can fly, not because they play harps, and not because they're
going to earn their wings. Y'all watch that movie, It's
a Wonderful Life. Remember old Clarence, he has
to earn his wings, you know. Well, I got news for you. That's
not biblical. I love the story. That's one
of my favorite Christmas movies. But that's not, theologically,
it's not correct. We don't earn wings, all right?
When we get to heaven, as they say, we're not going to be lounging
on a cloud playing a harp with halos and wings. I saw another
movie where they were talking about doing a Christmas play,
and the lady who was directing it didn't have halos on the angels.
And boy, that upset a lot of people. You gotta have a halo.
You're an angel. I know the only one that's got
a halo in this group is me. Anyway, but we're not going to
have halos and wings. So the reason the pastors or
the elders of the churches in the seven churches, they're called
angels is because they're messengers. That's what the word means. They're
messenger, messenger boy. I'm just, you know, don't shoot
the messenger. I'm just the messenger boy. and so but Christ sometimes
is called the angel of the covenant or the angel of the Lord because
he is the great prophet he's the he's the supreme prophet
our prophet our priest our king and the reason I believe this
one is Christ himself because it says in verse one having the
key to the of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his
hand now he's talking this is symbolic language uh... This is language that describes
the power of Christ in his sovereignty. A lot of times in the Bible,
keys are mentioned. Hopefully you don't believe this
is a literal key that unlocks a literal door. No, the key is a way of opening
and closing doors. Christ has the key of life and
death. the keys of death and hell. He
has the key of salvation. He is the key of salvation, isn't
he? He said, I'm the door. And so
what's he talking about? He's the way to God. There's
only one way to God, and Christ is the key. If you want to open
the way to God, you come to Christ. You don't reach in your pocket
and pull out a literal key. So we know this is symbolic,
all right? There's no argument here that
this is symbolic language. and the Book of Revelation is
full of symbolic language. And here's the thing about interpreting
the Bible. If you're going to say that one
particular thing is symbolic and then another particular thing
is not symbolic but literal, what rule of interpretation do
you use to determine which is which? Now, talking about the
thousand years that we'll get to later on, mainly. Somebody
says, well, I believe somebody who say, you know, now you all
know about the millennial views, pre-millennial, post-millennial,
all millennial, all that, and I'm not getting into that today.
Now, I am gonna get into that a little bit on our Wednesday
night messages, because I'm gonna be talking about preaching Christ
in the end time. That's gonna be the series when
we get back. But somebody says, well now, I can accept that the
number seven is symbolic, all right? That it means perfection. But I don't believe the thousand
years is symbolic. I believe that's literal, a calendar,
a literal time calendar, a thousand years. Now, my question, I've
asked several of them who adhere to that, I said, what rule of
scriptural interpretation do you use to determine that the
number seven is symbolic and the number thousand is not? They
have none. Just what they've been taught.
Traditions of men. The root word for the word thousand
is literally thousands. Plural. And you know, even in
Western Romanticism, We use the word thousand symbolically, don't
we? The husband tells his wife, I'm
gonna love you a thousand years. Does that make her angry? Because
why didn't you say, well, why not a thousand and one? Or why
not 10,000? The meaning that he has when
he says that is I've got a never ending love for you. That's symbolic,
see? Thousand is what we call a Hebrew
idiom. Not idiot, but idiom. I-D-I-O-M. It means it's a way of talking
to describe something that we can't really define in terms
of earthly things. So, a thousand. The Bible says a thousand years
to God is as a what? A day. And a day is as a thousand
years. Now we'll come to that more later
on, but look here. He has the key to the bottomless
pit. What is the bottomless pit? The bottomless pit is not hell. The bottomless pit is not hell.
Comes from a word, there's a word that 2 Peter uses, we won't turn
there, but I've got it in your lesson there. When he talks about
hell, and when the New Testament talks about hell, there's different
words. Sometimes it can be Sheol, which means the grave. In 2 Peter,
I think it's chapter two and verse four, but you can look
at your lesson there and you see, we'll look at it later on.
It's called Tartarus. And you know what it means? It
means the region of darkness. You know what the bottomless
pit is? Right here, this earth. The realm of darkness. Satan
is called the prince of the power of the air. That's the air we
breathe. And this world is the realm of
darkness. Why did Christ say that his people
are not of the world? Because he's saved us out of
the world. Now that doesn't mean we're in
a spaceship to Mars. Doesn't mean we're floating above
the earth. It means we're not citizens of this world. Sometimes
the Bible talks about those who dwell on earth. You know what
those are? Those are earth dwellers. Those are unbelievers who are
tied to this world. In John chapter 15, the Lord
said, marvel not if the world hate you, because it hated me
before it hated you. It's the world of unbelief. It's
the world of darkness. That's the world over which Satan
is allowed by God to preside as the God of this world for
a temporary period of time as a judgment of God against sin. That's what he does. John chapter 3 verse 19, this
is the condemnation that men love darkness and hate the light. The light, why do they hate the
light? Because it exposes us for what we are. It exposes our
false refuges. It exposes that realm where Satan
presides, even, listen now, even the realm of religion, even the realm of false Christianity. And people don't want to hear
it. They don't want to face that issue. They don't want to, they
don't want to deal with what the Bible teaches about that.
And that's the bottomless pit. Now Satan has no power, and this
is something people don't understand and can't receive, Satan has
no power but that which God allows him. Listen, this thing of salvation,
this thing of lostness, it's not a competition between God
and Satan. It is not a competition between
good and evil. I remember when I was a boy,
we went to a youth camp, and a fella got up and he was talking
about good and evil. And he said, it's like a ball
game. He said, God's score here, Satan's
score here, and whoever has the biggest score at the end wins.
Now, most people probably wouldn't buy into that. But you know what? That's kind of like what their
theology is if they would examine it. I heard the fella on TV who
described election. He hated God's sovereign electing
grace. You see, people don't hate election
if you can allow them to be the one who does the choosing. They
just don't want God to be the one to do the choosing. But you
remember the guy who said, well, here's what I think election
is. God votes for you, Satan votes against you, and you cast
the deciding vote. Well, that's not biblical. This
is not a competition. It says here that the angel came
down from heaven and gave Satan the key. He had the key of the
bottomless pit, a great chain in his hand. That chain is like
a leash. Satan's is on God's leash. And
it says in verse 2, he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent,
which is the devil, and Satan and bound him a thousand years. Satan under God's control. Now,
somebody says, well, I don't understand everything and all
the nuances about that. Well, nobody does, but we know
what the Bible teaches. Look here, he says he had the
key to the bottomless pit. 2 Thessalonians 2 is a good parallel
scripture to this. where it talks about God sending
strong delusion that those who refuse to believe the gospel
would believe a lie. Satan is allowed to deceive them.
This great chain that's in his hand, this great chain symbolizes
his power to bind up anyone who stands against Christ. And it's all his judgment. It's symbolic of his word, his
power, his authority. That same power and authority
that binds up those who stand against Christ is the same power
and authority that sets his people free. The truth shall make you
free, he said. The truth, no matter how unpleasant
it is to people, and even how unpleasant it is to us, will
set God's people free. I remember when I first heard
the truth of these issues. Boy, it didn't set me free immediately. I was against it. But at some
point in time, God made me willing in the day of his power. And it says he laid hold on the
dragon. Now, his coming down, I believe,
refers to his incarnation. That's that day. I don't know
what day it is. You know, we don't know what
day Christ actually was born. You know, people say traditionally
December 25th. It probably wasn't December 25th. Probably wasn't even the winter.
But I don't know. And it doesn't matter. All we
know is that he did come to earth. He was born of the Virgin. He was all the prophecies. One of the great things about
the Christmas story is the fulfillment of all the prophecies that you
see in the Old Testament in the life of Christ here on earth.
The Word made flesh dwelling among us. God manifest in the
flesh. And so he came to earth, it was
in an appointed time, appointed by God, in the fullness of the
time, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, that's his incarnation
in his birth, made under the law, that's all salvation conditioned
on him, to redeem them that were under the law. So he came down,
he had the key of the bottomless pit and a great chains, and he
laid hold of the devil. When in history did he lay hold
of the devil? I'll tell you exactly when he
laid hold of the devil. He laid hold of the devil when
he established on earth the ground upon which God would save his
people and forgive his people and justify his people. And we'll
talk about that more later, all right? But just hold that thought. Every identification of the devil
here, you remember back in Revelation 12 we saw these, the dragon,
again that speaks of his ferocious appetite for destruction. The
old serpent, that takes you back to the Garden of Eden, you remember
that Satan appeared to Eve in the form of a serpent and deceived
her. He was a murderer from the beginning,
John 8, 44. He abode not in the truth. The devil, the word devil,
it doesn't mean horns tail and pitchfork. Devil means slanderer
and accuser. Satan is called the accuser of
the brethren. All of his accusations against
God's chosen people are empty. Why? Because who shall lay anything
to the charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies. Who
can condemn us? It's Christ that what? Was born? Yes, He was born. But it's Christ
that died. Yea, rather He's risen again
and seated at the right hand of the Father. Righteousness
established. That's what this whole thing
is about. That's what Christmas is about. Old Simeon, remember
Luke chapter 2, he held the baby in his arms and he said, For
mine eyes have seen a baby in swaddling clothes. No. Now the
Bible does say that he laid in the manger in swaddling clothes,
and that's okay. But when Simeon saw the Christ
child, the eighth day after he was born, what did he say? Mine eyes have seen thy salvation. That's who he is. There's a lot of people, they
only get religious around Christmas, don't they? They like to keep
that person in the manger. They love that, but they don't
love the Christ of the cross, and they're not submitted to
his righteousness. Let me tell you something, they've missed
the Christmas story. They missed it. Mine eyes have
seen thy salvation. Satan, the term Satan means adversary. He's the enemy of Christ. and
he was bound a thousand years. That's a symbol, and like I said,
we'll talk about that more later on, but that thousand years is
a symbol of the entire New Testament gospel age from the time of Christ's
resurrection and ascension to the Father to the time of his
second coming. Incidentally, he's only coming
back one time, and when he comes, that's the
end of it all. of this earth. All right, okay.