Revelation 20: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

John sees an angel bind the dragon, who is the Devil and Satan, in the Abyss for a thousand years so he cannot deceive the nations, after which he must be let out for a short time. Those who died for their testimony and refused the beast's mark come to life and reign with Christ for the thousand years; this is called the first resurrection. When the time ends, Satan is released, gathers the nations for battle, fire from heaven devours them, and Satan is thrown into the lake of fire. Then the dead stand before a great white throne, the books and the book of life are opened, and everyone is judged by what they did.

Claim by Claim

1. 20:1
   • John saw an angel coming down from heaven.
   • The angel had the key of the abyss.
   • The angel had a great chain in his hand.
2. 20:2
   • The angel seized the dragon.
   • The dragon is the ancient serpent.
   • The ancient serpent is the Devil and Satan.
   • The angel bound him for a thousand years.
3. 20:3
   • The angel threw him into the abyss.
   • The angel shut it.
   • The angel set a seal over him.
   • The sealing was so that he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years were completed.
   • After the thousand years he must be released for a short time.
4. 20:4
   • John saw thrones.
   • Persons, unnamed in the text, sat on the thrones.
   • Judgment was given to those who sat on the thrones.
   • John saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus.
   • They had been beheaded for the word of God.
   • They had not worshiped the beast.
   • They had not worshiped the beast's image.
   • They had not received the beast's mark on their foreheads or on their hands.
   • They lived.
   • They reigned with Christ a thousand years.
5. 20:5
   • The rest of the dead did not live until the thousand years were completed.
   • This is the first resurrection.
6. 20:6
   • The one who has part in the first resurrection is blessed and holy.
   • The second death has no power over such people.
   • They will be priests of God and of Christ.
   • They will reign with him a thousand years.
7. 20:7
   • When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison.
8. 20:8
   • Satan will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth.
   • Those nations are Gog and Magog.
   • He will gather them together for battle.
   • Their number is like the sand of the sea.
9. 20:9
   • They went up over the breadth of the earth.
   • They surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city.
   • Fire came down from God out of heaven.
   • The fire devoured them.
10. 20:10
    • The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone.
    • The beast and the false prophet are in that lake.
    • They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
11. 20:11
    • John saw a great white throne.
    • John saw the one seated on the throne.
    • The earth and the heaven fled from his face.
    • No place was found for them.
12. 20:12
    • John saw the dead, small and great, standing before God.
    • Books were opened.
    • Another book was opened, which is the book of life.
    • The dead were judged out of the things written in the books.
    • The dead were judged according to their works.
13. 20:13
    • The sea gave up the dead that were in it.
    • Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them.
    • Each one was judged according to their works.
14. 20:14
    • Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.
    • This is the second death.
15. 20:15
    • Anyone not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

20:1

The King James "bottomless pit" translates the Greek word abyssos, the abyss. It names an immeasurably deep place used in this book as a holding prison for evil spirits. Note that it is treated as a chamber that can be locked, sealed and opened with a key, not as an open hole with no floor.

20:2

Three names are stacked here for one figure. "Devil" is the Greek diabolos, meaning slanderer or accuser. "Satan" is a Hebrew word meaning adversary or opponent, the one who stands against you, and in older Hebrew usage it could serve as a job description before it became a name. "That old serpent" means the ancient serpent, pointing back to the snake of Genesis 3. The thousand years mentioned here is where the English word millennium comes from, by way of the Latin mille anni.

20:3

A seal was a lump of soft clay or wax pressed across a closure and stamped with a signet ring. It did not add strength; it showed on whose authority the thing had been shut and made tampering visible to anyone who looked. The King James "a little season" uses "season" in its older sense of a stretch of time, with no reference to the four seasons of the year.

20:4

"Judgment was given unto them" is as ambiguous in the Greek as in the English: it can mean that they were given the authority to judge, or that a verdict was handed down in their favor. Translators go both ways and the rendering picks one. "The witness of Jesus" means testimony given about Jesus; the Greek word for that testimony, martyria, is the root of the English word martyr. Beheading was a Roman state execution, so the detail marks these as people killed by official action rather than by mob violence. The beast, its image and its mark on forehead or hand all refer back to chapter 13, where a hostile power demands the visible loyalty of those who buy and sell.

20:5

"Lived not again" simply means did not come back to life. Some ancient manuscripts lack this first sentence, and a few older English readers would not have found it in their copies, but the great majority of manuscripts include it.

20:6

"Blessed" translates the Greek makarios, which means fortunate or enviable, describing someone whose situation is good rather than someone on whom a blessing has been pronounced. To be a priest, in the ancient sense used here, was to have direct access to the presence of God and to act there on behalf of others, a role restricted in Israel to one family.

20:7

"Expired" in 1611 meant only that a stretch of time had run out. It carries no sense of a document lapsing or of anything dying.

20:8

"The four quarters of the earth" is a standard ancient idiom for the whole world in every direction, the same figure as the four corners. Gog and Magog come from Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39, where Gog is a ruler of a land called Magog who leads a coalition of distant nations in an attack on Israel and is destroyed. By the first century the two names had become shorthand for a final assault by hostile peoples from the far edges of the earth. "As the sand of the sea" was a stock phrase for a number too large to count.

20:9

"The breadth of the earth" means its wide open expanse, the broad plain across which an army would advance. "Compassed about" is older English for surrounded on all sides. "Camp" is a military word, the encampment of an army in the field. "Saints" translates the Greek hagioi, holy ones, which in this period meant God's people generally and not a select class of unusually holy individuals. "The beloved city" is a way of naming Jerusalem.

20:10

"Brimstone" is the old English word for sulfur. Burning sulfur gives off a choking smell and burns with a pale flame, and in the Hebrew scriptures fire and sulfur falling from the sky is the language used of the destruction of Sodom. "The false prophet" is the second beast of chapter 13, the figure who performs signs on behalf of the first beast and appears again in chapters 16 and 19.

20:11

"From whose face" is a Hebrew way of speaking in which the face stands for the whole person as encountered, so it means from his presence rather than from his facial features.

20:12

"Small and great" is a pairing of opposites used to mean everyone without exception, from the lowest in rank and importance to the highest. The image of opened books comes from ancient courts and royal archives, where written records were kept and read out. A "book of life" was pictured on the model of a city's register of living citizens, a list a name could be entered in or struck out of.

20:13

The King James "hell" here translates the Greek Hades, which in ordinary ancient usage means the realm of the dead in general, where everyone goes at death, not a place of punishment for the wicked. The King James uses the one English word "hell" for this and also for Gehenna, a different Greek word with a different sense; the word behind this verse is Hades, which is why the rendering says "the place of the dead."

20:14

Death and Hades, the place of the dead, are spoken of here as though they were persons or powers that can themselves be seized and disposed of. "The second death" is set against ordinary bodily dying, which is the first.