“But after these things he [Satan] must be released for a little while …”
(Rev. 20:3, NKJV)
The previous teaching examined the concept of today in Scripture, and pointed out that it functions as the telescoping of the end if you are obedient (today). Thus, if you are obedient today, it is also the Sabbath, or then: the concluding of all things. This is because God is only in today. The chronos time is thus alleviated when one enters this rest, and the mechanism to make this happen is to be obedient today. This is the core of standing secure in your position in Christ, the Day of Shalom, the Head. Strictly speaking it is also not today as a 24-hour period, but rather a position of NOW.
We concluded the previous teaching with the following summary: The Body of Christ must come to a completely new way of thinking, which will make manifest this completely different reality in which they are actually living. Within this lies power and unbound creative potential, in the consciousness of TODAY, which is currently largely regulated by our diachronic-psychological limitation of past, present and future. You cannot find yourself by delving into the past or projecting anything into the future.
The reign of peace which covers a symbolic period of a thousand years, is in other words the state of rest that God promises to those who are obedient to His voice today.
A given that is often used within the Pentecostal and Charismatic understandings of the so-called thousand year reign of peace, is that the devil will be unbound for a short period thereafter. Why, would one ask? He has already been triumphed over, already been bound, and now, within this view, a thousand years have passed where only peace reigned on earth? Why now? This makes no sense.
Rev. 20:2-3 describes it as follows: “He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.” The conclusion of these events are presented in verses 7-9a: “Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea. They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city.”
In the teaching of Day 1034-1036 we said that we would return to this issue at a later date. Then we also explained that the dragon/snake/devil/Satan lives in the bottomless pit of human nature, the heart. In Genesis already he was cursed by God to dwell in the dusty, material realm from which man was created. This demonic underground must now be bound in the heart, in other words, “be rendered powerless” (Rom. 6:6, TCNT).
But he can be released from this if he chooses, for “a little while,” in Greek, the word mikros! The key to this issue is the phrase “a little while,” also translated as “a little time” (KJV), “a short time” (ALTNT), “a little season” (Geneva), “for a while” (TCNT), “briefly” (MSG), transliterated as “mikros chronos”!
As believer, you exist, today, in Christ in this rest of God, but you can eventually choose to be caught through being unfaithful, a slave to your desires (Prov. 11:6). James 1:14-15 makes it as clear as follows: “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”
Remember, sin is not the things you do wrong – it is hamartia, to miss your mark or purpose. On the basis of your wrong choice you then fall out of the rest of today. We are thus clearly concerned here with a particular choice you need to make to continuously choose life (Deut. 30:19). If you choose death, in other words, choose to be outside “the words of eternal life” (John 6:68), you open, for a little while, the lid of the heart’s evil underground, and this releases Satan from his bound state and gives his free reign in your life. This brings “bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts … confusion and every evil thing are there.” (James 3:14 & 16).
The reality that is explained here, is prophetically informed by Zech. 5:5-8: “Then the angel who talked with me came out and said to me, ‘Lift your eyes now, and see what this is that goes forth.’ So I asked, ‘What is it?’ And he said, ‘It is a basket that is going forth.’ He also said, ‘This is their resemblance throughout the earth: Here is a lead disc lifted up, and this is a woman sitting inside the basket’; then he said, ‘This is Wickedness!’ And he thrust her down into the basket, and threw the lead cover over its mouth.” The basket here is translated from the Egyptian word efa, which means measure (Easton’s Bible Dictionary). In the Ancient Hebrew Dictionary of the Bible this word is pictorially represented by a juxtaposing of horns and lips. This pictograph of the horns represents power or strength, and the lips represents the mouth of “any type of hole. The nostrils (holes) are for breathing.” Clearly this opponent has power over the enemy (Luke 10:19), and you and I must never underestimate “the strength of sin” (1 Cor. 15:56).
In this pit of the heart, or efa, lives godlessness, in anticipation, and breathes aggressively, or with sexual passion, through its flaring nostrils (“heavy in passion or anger” – AHDB), waiting for your desires to lift the cover, so that you can be seduced into sin. Therefore Paul notes in no uncertain terms in Eph. 4:27: “nor give place to the devil”.
From the above it is clear how the devil can be released from his imprisonment “for a little while”. But what does it mean that he will “be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea. They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city.”
A great factor in the wrong interpretation of this passage is the translation of the word nations. In Greek the root word can indeed be translated as such, especially in reference to Paul’s use of the words heathens/Gentiles (to denote those who are not Jews). But it can also be simply translated as “the people”, as is the case in Bishops Bible, CEV, Geneva Bible and Tyndale Bible, or “the Gentiles”, as we find in the Jubilee Bible. According to Thayer the term can also mean “a multitude, company, troop swarm, a multitude of individuals of the same nature”.
The root word here is the word ethō, which means, “to be used”! To be used by whom? By Satan! 1 John 3:8 makes it clear: “He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning.” John 8:44 also explains it well: “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.”
Therefore it is possible for 1 John 3:9 to say: “Whoever has been born of God does not sin …”
Yet one remains bothered, from this perspective, by the fact that it is the individual who lifts the lid, by way of speak,ing but that people, in a plural sense, are affected by it. This is however, from a Biblical perspective, not a strange idea. When I sin, Heb. 12:15 notes, “many become defiled”. Look at the following examples that carry the same implication:
- “And Moses said to Aaron, ‘What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?’” (Ex. 32:21)
- “And He will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who sinned and who made Israel sin.” (1 Kings 14:16)
- “Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves.” (Acts 20:30)
- “Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?” (1 Cor. 5:6)
- “Do not be deceived: ‘Evil company corrupts good habits.’” (1 Cor. 15:33)
- “And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy.” (Gal. 2:13)
- “But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness. And their message will spread like cancer.” (2 Tim. 2:16-17)
- “And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed.” (2 Pet. 2:2)
Perhaps the next section is the most descriptive of children of God that have already gained victory over Evil at the cross (Col. 2:14-15), but still open the lid of unrighteousness in themselves: “and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority … These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: ‘A dog returns to his own vomit,’ and, ‘a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.’” (2 Pet. 2:10 & 17-22).
We need to explain verses 8-9 of Rev. 20 within this new perspective: “and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea. They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city.”
Who it is that is affected by the wave of unrighteousness that corrupts like leaven (1 Cor. 5:6-9) is of great importance. In the next teaching we try to figure this out.
- Selah: Explain to someone the mystery of Rev. 20:7-8.
- Read: 1 Kings 1-9.
- Memorise: 1 Kings 1:39.
