Okay, let’s have some fun with this. I’m going to come at this sideways and backwards, but not so much head on. To come at it head-on, we’d have to work from the Olivet Discourse, the historical accounts of what happened 70A.D., and muddle our ways forward. I’ve already pointed you to some places to work from that angle, so dig into those if that’s where you want to camp.

Coming from that angle, we will run into all sorts of roadblocks and historical inaccuracies that will muddy the waters and can get us stuck in mire. (designed that way on purpose) That path will be long and arduous and not much fun because it will rile about every religious spirit there is. So we’re going to come at this another way. There are far better teachers than I, so all I can do is show you what I’ve learned and you can explore it and see if it resonates with you. Maybe just use it to springboard into your own happy digging.

There’s this silly concept I learned back in my early training of reading comprehension. I was taught that if you’re struggling to understand a concept, if the chapter or page or even paragraph you just read just doesn’t make sense to you, you don’t understand, you don’t know how to comprehend it accurately, to try reading it backwards — not words backwards, but sentences or phrases backwards. Sometimes the end helps you sort out the middle.

LET’S WORK BACKWARDS….

With that in mind, let’s consider Revelation 20. Let’s lay aside all the details that come before, the scroll, the trumpets, the seals, etc. and just skip to the end. There’s this culmination where Christ comes back on a white horse with the armies of heaven (chapter 19). They wage war on the unrighteous inhabitants of earth, and it ends with the beast and false prophet being tossed into the “lake of fire”. THEN a mighty angel seizes the devil and binds him. Satan is thrown into the abyss for “a thousand years”.

Then the prophecy says a curious thing: “After that he must be released for a little while.”

Let’s just stop there for a moment. Why? What’s going on here? [It took me a long, long time of studying Revelation to undo the religious spirit’s influence on my comprehension. A. LONG. TIME.]

This is almost a foreshadowing, because right after that sentence it goes into what’s happening in the heavenly realm – thrones appeared; the martyred were resurrected; the righteous were accounted for, and it says simply that the martyred and righteous “reigned with Christ for a thousand years.”

So satan is thrown into a prison abyss for the same thousand years Christ and the martyred and righteous reign on earth. That’s literally all it says about that. We have to go to Isaiah and other prophecies about this time to know what it may be like. John does not have a vision for it in his prophecy.

Before we move on, let’s pause and revisit that curious statement that the devil will be bound for a thousand years (the same thousand years Christ is reigning on earth). Verse 3 tells us he is bound “…so that he might not deceive the nations any longer.” From that, is it safe to deduce deception is no longer a player on the earth among men during the millennial? At least an external source of deception?

There are a thousand years of Christ’s righteous reign where we’re told the righteous and martyred co-reign with Him on earth and satan is bound from deceiving the nations. So clearly there will still be nations under Christ’s reign here. Is that a fair deduction?

And “after that”…. After what? Christ’s millennial reign. Then satan is loosed “for a little while” or a little season.

So how do you read that? Does that mean there’s an end to Christ’s millennial reign? Because the passage says “after that”, referring to his millennial reign. Does that connote an end? Or do the two things (Christ’s reign and satan’s release) continue to happen simultaneously?

MILLENNIAL REIGN EXPIRATION….

When we keep reading, we get to verse seven where it says, “when the thousand years are expired…” Expired… Greek: teleo. Complete, executed, discharged, accomplished. So there is an end to this millennial reign of Christ. It’s a set amount of time, and when it’s done, it’s done. Again, why?

Why is there a millennial reign of Christ that ENDS, expires, is completed? Why is satan released at that end? Why wasn’t satan vanquished to the lake of fire like the false prophet and the beast? Why must he be “released for a little season”?

And how does Christ’s millennial reign end? Is there an announcement across the earth? Does Christ go somewhere else than where He had been? What do the inhabitants on earth do? Do they continue as they were before? How does this transition from millennial rule to satan loosed to deceive?

All we’re told is this: “And when the thousand years are expired, satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle….” [That word battle means warfare and could mean a single encounter or a series.]

WHAT DOES THE MILLENNIAL REIGN LOOK LIKE?

This is where I want to camp for right now, because we’re going to have to use our imaginations to figure out what this could possibly look like. The Scriptures are eerily silent on the details of this. Let’s just assume we know the broad strokes of what the righteous reign of Christ would look like on the earth. Relative peace? Mostly if not completely crime free? Relative unity? Probably a homeostasis, a balance of nature to man? Can we assume perversions and deviations from God’s character are not present, or are swiftly brought into order? Are human physical and mental limitations absent? We can probably agree it’s definitely good on earth, right?

Was Christ’s reign on earth physical or spiritual? Is He reigning in physical form, or is it a spiritual concept?

If it’s physical, where is He reigning from? Let’s just presume it’s Jerusalem for this exercise. What happens at the end of the appointed millennium when it expires? Does He leave Jerusalem or does He stay? If He leaves, where does He go? How does He go? If He stays, wouldn’t that mean He’d be present when satan is going about deceiving the nations? If He’s present in physical form, how in the world would satan be able to deceive the nations?

What about all the resurrected martyrs and righteous that reigned with Him? Do they die on the earth? Surely not, for Scripture tells us there’s just one physical death. Then are they reigning in spirit or natural form? From where and how? Do they stay or leave at the expiration?

Turn this over in your head. I think it matters if His reign is spiritual or natural. Do we assume the dead brought to life that reign with Him are reigning in the same manner as He is? So are they all reigning in the natural or in the flesh? At the expiration, if it’s natural, where do they go? Or do they stay? Being resurrected they cannot die anymore, so wouldn’t they remain in the natural if they were already here in the natural? If they stay, wouldn’t all the inhabitants of the earth know them and know of their reign?

If it’s a spiritual reign, how is it conducted? Do people still pray? How do people know how to align with the righteous rule of Christ if it’s spiritual? Is it impressed upon their hearts? Is it taught? Are there schools or churches to instruct people, or will they just know what to do?

Is it safe to assume the millennial reign of Christ and His resurrected saints is either in the natural or in the spiritual? Is there another way it can be? Put a bookmark here.

SATAN IS RELEASED FROM HIS THOUSAND YEAR PRISON…

Now when satan is loosed, how does that look? Will people know he was loosed? Who has seen satan to know what he looks like in present day? When he was bound and thrown into the abyss, did anyone see that happen? Was it a physical location in our four-dimensional world? Or is it a separate location outside of our dimensional world, in the realm where spirits and angels and demons live? If it’s the latter, who sees his imprisonment? If it’s the latter, who sees his release? Put a bookmark here.

HOW DOES EARTH TRANSITION FROM MILLENNIAL REIGN TO DECEIVED?

Now on the natural plane of the earth, after a millennium of peace and righteous rule, how do the inhabitants of earth go from peace and unity to deception and rebellion of God? This is what has stumped me all of my life. How could a world operating under the righteous reign of Christ turn from that into deception and rebellion to God? What would it take to transition from peace to a large people group ready to battle the saints on earth and God Himself?

These are questions you have to ponder to try to wrap your head around these limited descriptors John gives us of the millennial reign and loose of satan for what looks like the end of the end, because right after that the new Jerusalem is presented and a new heaven and earth replaces the old.

Here’s my take after a lot of study, prayer and thought, and I’ll present sub-points in different posts in the coming days that help build it and show you where I’m coming from.

I think Christ came back sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70A.D., (but I don’t know how long after). We have eyewitness accounts of a heavenly army at the destruction of Jerusalem around 70A.D. I think His reign and rule was in the spiritual dimension. He may or may not have appeared in physical form in this period of time, but I’m leaning toward it being more spiritual than natural.

No one saw satan being bound in the abyss prison, just like I doubt anyone saw the false prophet and beast be put in the lake of fire. I think the lake of fire is allegorical to an extent. I think these things happen in another dimension than what we can see here on earth. John is telling us things he saw, right? (in Revelation) Look at Revelation 12. John is telling us of something that happened in the past: Satan is thrown out of heaven and pursues both Israel and the children of God. No one saw this in the natural, but John gives the vision of past actions and how they looked in the spiritual realm — another dimension humanity doesn’t have access to see directly. I think this is the same thing with the lake of fire and abyss – we won’t witness it on earth, but it’s happening in a parallel dimension we can’t see.

We can study Revelation 12 and know what was described by John’s vision actually manifested on earth, but no one ever sees the dragon, right? It’s in the spiritual dimension. Yet it manifests in the earthly dimension. Same thing happens throughout all of Revelation.

Right now we know Christ is at the right hand of the Father, seated in Heaven. He “ever lives to make intercession for the saints”, right? And we know that after Christ’s ascension, our body’s become the temple of God, and that the Spirit dwells within us. [1Cor. 3:16, 2Cor. 6:16-19] and that the body of believers presents as the temple of God, where He dwells. [Ephesians 2:19-21] Paul calls it the “mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints…this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” [Col. 1:26-28] The MYSTERY is CHRIST IN YOU. Do you get it??? Christ is IN the believer, and that has been hidden for ages past only to be revealed after Christ’s great victory. (It had to be, and I can’t wait to talk about this part in another post.)

Everything changed after Christ. He was literally the door to God. [John 10:9] We are literally changed when we receive the truth of Christ and put ourselves in His care. Everything moves from natural to spiritual, and we live out our remaining physical days on earth learning and becoming more spiritual beings and less natural beings. It’s a metamorphosis of types, if you will.

It’s a spiritual concept that can only be experienced. The world can’t understand it. Paul says, “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.”

Paul goes on to explain how the natural world can neither see nor understand what’s happening in this realm. Read the rest of the chapter, 1Cor. 2.

So whether Christ’s millennial reign is in the flesh or spirit, I do not know. But I’m going to guess it’s in the spiritual, and the removal of the false prophet and beast and satan’s removal from the earth, and the unbelievers who are slain, enables the remaining humanity on the earth to see clearly to walk under the leadership of Christ, into a new era.

In this era, humanity is no longer under the threat of deception and is able to walk with Christ. The millennial reign is probably much like what the Garden of Eden was supposed to be like before the Fall.

Now tell me if you have generations in this thousand years of reign, walking on earth in love and humility, in peace and cooperation with one another, how do you think satan, when released from his prison, is going to deceive the nations?

I was pressing God for this when I was first starting to try to wrap my head around it. I can tell you where I was when He said, “How many generations do you think it would take, Michelle, to forget the righteous reign of Christ?” [I’ll revisit this later.]

Satan’s imprisonment and release aren’t on the world stage. The world isn’t going to see this happen, anymore than they saw his expulsion from heaven with a third of the rebellious angels. We’re not going to be here on earth and be like, oh here he comes! He’s not going to announce his arrival back on the scene with a press conference. He’s going to operate as he always does, in the shadows.

How long would it take a worldwide society walking in peace and love and unity to be deceived? It probably wouldn’t be the first generation. It probably wouldn’t even be the second generation. It will be a gradual infiltration. He won’t be able to hit it head on. He would have to infect it.

I think he made some Faustian bargains with some people. I think we’ve been studying those people awhile. I think he made some backroom Faustian bargains with some people who stayed behind the scenes and infiltrated the institutions of government and policy and economy and media and social and entertainment – you get the idea. And they began to subvert the systems. I’ll build on that later.

If there was a peaceful millennium, you can rest assured the memory of it would have to be erased in order to deceive the world. No one (on a large scale, in mass numbers) is going to trade peace and love and health for what we have now. The record of it would have to be struck. The memory of it would have to be erased. Every last bit of evidence of it would have to be altered, and a false narrative would have to be given of anything they couldn’t erase.

Try not to knee jerk too much. Really chew on some of those questions. I’ll build on this in the coming days.