John Gill · 123 of 127

Chapter 8. Of the Millennium, or Personal Reign of Christ with the Saints on the New Earth a Thousand Years · Part 4

4b1. First, from the birth of Christ, who came to destroy the works of the devil, and before whom Satan fell as lightning from heaven; yet this falls short of the binding and casting him into the bottomless pit: whoever considers the state of the Gentile world when Christ came, being under the power of the god of this world, the nations thereof being left to walk in their own ways; nay, Christ forbade his disciples going into any of the cities of the Gentiles; nor had they a commission to preach the gospel to all nations, till after his resurrection from the dead; who, I say, that considers these things, can ever imagine that Satan was now bound? And if we look into the state of the Jewish nation and church, how sadly corrupted in their morals, being a wicked and an adulterous generation, and depraved in their religious sentiments; neglecting the word of God, and preferring the traditions of the elders to it; rejecting Christ, when he came to them with all the marks and characters of the true Messiah, and treating him with the utmost indignation and contempt; and were, as cur Lord says, “of their father the devil,” and his “lusts” they would “do;” there can be no reason to believe that Satan was now bound. His many attacks on the person and life of Christ show the contrary; as his putting Herod on seeking the young child’s life to destroy it, in his infancy; and to make that carnage of the infants in, and about Bethlehem, he did; his tempting him in the wilderness, in the manner he did, which was bold, daring, and insolent; instigating the scribes and Pharisees to lay hands on him, and kill him, marching towards him as the prince of the world, and combating with him in the garden; and putting it into the heart of Judas to betray him; and stirring up the people of all sorts to he pressing to the Roman governor, for the crucifixion of him, and by which means he was brought to the dust of death. And though, indeed, Satan was dispossessed of the bodies of men, which possession shows he was not bound; yet when dispossessed he was not bound; and cast into the bottomless pit, but was suffered to go and rove about where he pleased; and though Christ, by his death, destroyed Satan, who had the power of death, and spoiled his principalities and powers, and ruined his works; yet all this did not amount to a binding and confinement of his person in prison.

4b2. Secondly, Others date these thousand years of Satan’s binding from the resurrection of Christ; when it is true, Christ ascended on high, and led captivity captive, and poured down his Spirit upon his apostles, on the day of Pentecost, whereby they were wonderfully fitted to preach his gospel; and accordingly preached it with great success, both in Judea and in the Gentile world; but still Satan was not bound. Not in Judea; for in the first and purest Christian church, he filled the hearts of Ananias and Sapphira to lie against the Holy Ghost. He stirred up the Jews to lay hold on the apostles, and put them in prison; and to stone Stephen the proto-martyr; he raised a violent persecution against the church at Jerusalem, and havoc was made of it, and men and women hauled to prison; he put Herod upon killing James the brother of John, and committing Peter to prison. And whereas the ministers of the word went into other countries, preaching the gospel, the Jews, under the instigation of Satan, stirred up the people against them wherever they came; as at Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Thessalonica, and other places; and what the Christian Hebrews suffered from them, may be seen in Hebrews 10:32, 33. Nor was Satan bound in the Gentile world; for though the gospel made its way into divers countries and cities, to the conversion of many souls, and the forming of many churches; yet heathenism, under the influence of the god of this world, was the prevailing religion everywhere; and the sect of the Christians was everywhere spoken against; and the apostles and ministers of the word, were everywhere persecuted; bonds and imprisonment waited for them in all places; and all the apostles suffered death for the sake of the gospel; see the account the apostle gives of himself and others, in 1 Corinthians 4:9, 12, 13.

4b3. Thirdly, others begin these thousand years of Satan’s binding at the destruction of Jerusalem, which was very dreadful; in the siege of it eleven hundred thousand men perished; and when such insurrections, internal quarrels, seditions, murders, and scenes of iniquity were among the Jews themselves, Satan could never be thought to be bound then; and after it, though things took a different turn with the Jews, and in favour of the Christians, in Judea and elsewhere; the Jews, though they had the same ill will to them, had not the same power against them; yet they themselves manifestly appeared to be under the deception of Satan, by their giving heed to false prophets, and false christs, which our Lord foretold would arise; witness Bar Cochab, a false messiah, who rose up in the times of Trajan, whom the Jews embracing, rebelled against the empire, which brought a war upon them in which fifty eight thousand were slain; and under the same deception by false messiahs, and under the same blindness and hardness of heart, and malice against Christ and his gospel, have they continued to this day. And as for the Gentile world, though the gospel got ground every where, and multitudes of souls were converted, and the Gentile oracles were struck dumb;; the temples almost desolate, and worship in them was intermitted; yet Gentilism continued to be the prevailing religion throughout the Roman empire, till the times of Constantine, at the beginning of the fourth century; as appears by the persecutions of the Christians by the Roman emperors: the first persecution was under Nero; this was indeed a little before the destruction of Jerusalem; the occasion of it was this, he himself set fire to the city of Rome, and then, under the instigation of Satan, charged it upon the Christians, whom he most inhumanly racked and tortured, and put to the most cruel deaths that could be invented. The tenth and last persecution was under Dioclesian, a little before the times of Constantine; his area was called by the Egyptians the area of the martyrs; the whole world was imbrued with their blood; and the world was more exhausted of men thereby than by any war, as the historian says; it was the longest and most severe, it lasted “ten” years; and perhaps, in allusion to the ten persecutions, or to the ten years of the last persecution, it is said in Revelation 2:10. “The devil shall cast some of you into prison, and ye shall have tribulation ten days;” and if the devil cast the saints into prison, he himself could not be bound and cast into prison; nor could this be their reigning time; nay Dioclesian thought he had got an entire victory over the Christians, and therefore set up pillars, in some parts of the empire, signifying that the Christian name was blotted out, and the superstition of Christ everywhere destroyed, as he called it; and the worship of the gods propagated; so far was Satan from being bound, that he triumphed over Christ and his cause: and that he could not be bound in this period of time, appears by the multitude of heathen deities worshipped; the number not only of heathen philosophers among the Greeks and Romans, but of the Magi in the east, and of the Druids in the west, and of the Brahmins among the Indians; also from the vile and false charges brought by the heathens under the influence of Satan against the Christians, of idolatries, murders, incests, impurities, and unheard of crimes; which obliged their writers, as Justin Martyr, Tertuilian, &c. to write apologies in the defence of them; to which may be added, the scoffs and flouts, the malice and blasphemy of the heathen writers against Christ and the Christian religion, as Crescens, Lucian, Celsus and Porphyry: and if we look into the Christian church in the three first centuries, how it was harassed and distressed with heretics and heresies, we shall soon be convinced that Satan was not bound, nor Christ’s reign began; to reckon up only the names of them from Simon Magus to Sabellius, would fill up a page; some denying the doctrine of the Trinity; some the distinct personality in the Deity; some the person of Christ, either his real humanity or his proper Deity, or divine Sonship; as vile a set of men now were, for corruption in doctrine and practice, as perhaps ever was, and may truly be called a “synagogue of Satan,” as they seem to be in Revelation 2:9 in the times of these men therefore the devil could never be said to be bound, when he had a synagogue of them.

4b4. Fourthly, others begin the date of Satan’s binding, and Christ’s reigning, from the times of Constantine; and reckoning the thousand years from hence they will reach to the beginning of the fourteenth century. Those who go this way suppose the vision in Revelation 12:1-17 and that in Revelation 20:1-15 to be the same, which cannot be; that in the former respects the imperial dragon, or the papal empire under the influence of Satan; the latter the person of the devil himself, with his angels; the former respects a battle in heaven, the latter a combat on earth; the former represents Satan as east out of heaven on earth, the latter as cast out of the earth into the bottomless pit; the former says nothing of the binding and shutting up of Satan, the latter does; the former speaks of him after his casting down, as at liberty to go about in the earth and distress the nations, and annoy the church; but the latter as in such confinement as to be able to do neither: but that Satan could not be bound, nor the reign of Christ take place in the above period of time is manifest; for though upon Constantine’s coming to the throne, and declaring himself a Christian, the Christian religion lift up its head, and flourished greatly with respect to numbers, wealth, riches, and grandeur, yet all its outward greatness in the issue ended in its ruin; and though heathenism was demolished throughout the empire, and pagan temples shut up, yet pagan rites and ceremonies were introduced into the church, and gradually prevailed; and especially when the man of sin was revealed, so that the followers of antichrist go by the name of Gentiles ((Rev. 11:2). That the devil was not now bound, appears by the flood he cast out of his mouth to destroy the woman, the church, who was obliged to disappear and flee into the wilderness, the remnant of whose seed he persecuted (Rev. 12:13-17), by which flood is meant either a flood of heresies, as those of the Arians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Macedoninns, and Pelagians, which sadly infested and disturbed the churches; or a flood of persecution, particularly by the Arians, which was begun by Constantine himself; who, as the historian says, exercised “vin persecutionis,” towards the latter end of his life, being imposed upon: and this was carried on with great violence by his sons, Constantius and Valens, who embraced that heresy; and in after times by some of the northern nations, who broke into the empire, and became Arians. In the reign of Julian, which, though but short, heathenism was in a great measure restored, and many diabolical arts were used by him to revive paganism, and extirpate Christianity; the schools of the Christians forbid, their temples shut up, and those of the heathens opened. These, with his attempt, in favour of the Jews, to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem, in spite of prophecy, and his outrageous blasphemies against the Galilean, as he used to call our Lord, plainly show that Satan was not bound. The irruptions of the Goths and Vandals, and other northern nations, into the empire, and the destruction they made in church and state, is a full proof of this. Within this interval of time antichrist rose up, and manifestly appeared; whose coming was after the working of Satan, with all powers and signs, and lying wonders; whose followers give heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; and who worship devils, and idols of gold and silver; and whose reign is to continue one thousand two hundred and sixty days or years, and so not yet at an end: and while antichrist reigns, Christ’s reign cannot take place, nor Satan be bound. Also much about the same time, that vile impostor Mahomet, under the instigation of the devil, arose; when the bottomless pit was opened, and then Satan surely could not lie bound in it; out of which came the smoke of the absurd Alkoran, which darkened the sun and moon, the light of great part of the world; and from whence came his locusts, the Saracens, which, for some centuries, greatly afflicted the Christian empire, whose king was called Abaddon, and Apollyon (Rev. 9:11), as did the Turks after them, whose empire was set up in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and continued to distress Europe till the latter end of the last. And now, so long as Mahometanism prevails over so large a part of the world as it does, the thousand years reign, and the binding of Satan, cannot be expected. To which may be added, the persecutions of the Waldenses and Albigenses, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, by the papal antichrist, and which have been exercised on them, even in the last century, in the valleys of Piedmont, show that Satan cannot be bound. And as to the state of heathenism, it will appear, by consulting the Magdeburgensian centuriators, that it has subsisted in various parts of the world, throughout all the centuries, from Constantine to the fourteenth century; and about the end of the fifteenth, when America was first discovered, in what state were the inhabitants of it? Idolators: yea, they worshipped the devil in some places in the West Indies; as the inhabitants of the East Indies, and others in North and South America: and how many nations and kingdoms, both in America and in the East Indies, are, at this day, under the power of heathenism? And it was a calculation made by some in the last century, that if the whole known world, was divided into thirty equal parts, nineteen of them would be found idolatrous Gentiles. Surely then Satan cannot be bound, so as not to deceive the nations.

4b5. Fifthly, some begin the thousand years reign, and the binding of Satan, at the reformation from popery; but whether the date is from Wicklift, John Huss, and Jerom of Prague, or from Luther; they all of them either suffered death, or met with great inhumanity and ill treatment, from the instruments of Satan, and therefore he could not be bound; and great numbers of their followers were persecuted unto death. Since the reformation, were the massacre in Paris, when ten thousand Protestants were murdered in one night, and seventy thousand in seven days time: and the many martyrs burnt here in England, in queen Mary’s reign; and the massacre in Ireland, in which two hundred thousand perished; all under an hellish influence, are clear demonstrations that Satan was not bound. Besides, though various nations, at the reformation, fell from popery, yet all did not, and some have revolted to it since; and whoever considers the great decline of religion in our day, the increase of popery, and the spread of errors and heresy among us, and the great profaneness and immorality that prevail, can never think that Satan is bound, or that the millennium is begun. Upon the whole, it must clearly appear, that there never as yet has been such a time, in which it could be said, that Satan had no power to deceive the nations, either by drawing them into idolatry, and other bad principles, or into persecuting practices; nor any time in which the church of Christ has been in a state of purity and peace, free from idolatry, heresy, and persecution; wherefore it may be strongly concluded, that Satan is not yet bound; and that Christ’s kingdom is not yet come; nor are these things to be expected in the present state.

The spiritual reign in the latter day bids fairest for it; and which, indeed, is a branch of Christ’s kingdom, when both Pope and Turk will be destroyed; but then Satan will only be destroyed in his instruments, but not in his person bound. Besides, the spiritual and personal reign of Christ, though branches of his kingdom, belong to different periods; and will not both take place in the present state; the spiritual reign will be in the present earth, and of saints in a sinful, mortal state, and in the use of ordinances: but the millennium reign will be on the new earth, and of saints in a risen perfect state, standing in no need of ordinances, as now. The millennium reign will not be till after the first resurrection; and the first resurrection will not be till the second coining of Christ, when the dead in him shall rise first. The personal reign of Christ will not be till the new heavens and the new earth are made, which will be the seat of it; and these will not be till the present heavens and earth are dissolved and burnt up; and this conflagration will not be till Christ comes a second time. The reign of Christ with his saints, will not be till Satan is bound, as well as antichrist destroyed; and Satan will not be bound, till Christ, the mighty angel, descends from heaven to earth, which will not be till the end of the world.

5a. I close all, with an answer to a few of the principal objections to the above scheme; and to two or three questions relative to the same.

5a. First, to objections. As,

5a1. It may be objected, to what purpose will Satan be bound a thousand years to prevent his deception of the nations, when there will be no nations to be deceived by him during that time, since the wicked will be all destroyed in the general conflagration; and the saints will be with Christ, out of the reach of temptation and seduction? I answer, this will not be the case at the first binding of Satan, which is the first thing Christ will do when he descends from heaven; first bind Satan, then raise the righteous dead, and change the living saints, and take both to himself; and then burn the world: but as the time between the binding of Satan, and the burning of the world, may be but short, I lay no stress on this. Let it be observed, that the same nations, Satan, by being bound, is prevented from deceiving any more, till the thousand years are ended, are those that will be deceived by him after his being loosed; as appears by comparing Revelation 20:3 with Revelation 20:8 and to prevent their being deceived by him, and put upon schemes to the disturbance of the saints, in their reign with Christ, he and they, that is, their separate spirits, will be shut up together in the bottomless pit; so that the one will be in a state of inactivity, and incapable of tempting and deceiving; and the other in a case and condition not susceptible of temptation and seduction; and both will have enough to do to grapple with their dreadful torments in this confined state; the one will not be at leisure to propose a mischievous scheme, nor the other to hearken to it; and Satan will full well know, that should he form a scheme, it would be impossible to put it in execution in their present circumstances. That the wicked, in an immortal state, are capable of being tempted and deceived by Satan, appears by a fact, after the loosing of him; for which reason it was necessary he should be bound during the thousand years: and that the saints, in an immortal state, are not exempt from attempts upon them, by him and his emissaries, only when he is under absolute confinement, which made it necessary, during the said term of time; and which will be his case after this affair is over, to all eternity.

5a2. That though the saints are said to reign with Christ a thousand years (Rev. 20:4, 6), yet they are not there said to reign “on earth.” But it is elsewhere said, the meek shall inherit the earth; and righteousness, or righteous men, shall dwell in the “new earth;” and the redeemed of the Lamb, who are made kings and priests unto God, shall “reign on earth;” and they are the same with the priests of God and Christ, that shall reign with him a thousand years. Besides, it appears from the context, that this reign will be on earth; the angel that descends from heaven to bind Satan, descends on earth; the binding of Satan will be on earth; for there he deceived the nations before, and will after his loosing: the resurrection, and living again of the dead, will be on earth; and so, in course, their reign with Christ there. Besides, they are manifestly the camp of the saints, the beloved city, the Gog and Magog army will encompass, who will come up on the “breadth of the earth;” and therefore the saints, the beloved city, must be on earth; and who are no other than the holy city John saw come down from God out of heaven, that is, on earth, where the tabernacle of God will be with them (Rev. 21:2, 3).

5a3. It is objected to the personal reign of Christ with the saints on earth, that they, by reason of the frailty of nature, will be unfit to converse with Christ, in his glorious human nature; but, like the apostles Paul and John, who, when he appeared to them, fell down at his feet, either trembling or as dead. But this objection proceeds upon a supposition, that the saints will then be in a sinful, mortal state; which will not be the case; but as their souls will be perfectly sanctified, so their bodies will be raised in incorruption, power, and glory, and fashioned like to the glorious body of Christ, and so fit to converse with him in it; yea, more so than separate souls in heaven.

5a4. It is suggested, that for the saints to come down from heaven, and leave their happy state there, and dwell on earth, must be a diminishing of their happiness, and greatly detract from it. No such thing; for Christ will come with them; all the saints will come with him, and dwell and reign with him; and where he is, heaven is, happiness is. Did Moses and Elias lose any of their happiness when they came down from heaven, and conversed with Christ on the mount, at his transfiguration? None at all. No more will the saints, by being and reigning with Christ on earth, in a more glorified state than he was then in: yea, so far from being lessened hereby, that the happiness of the saints will be increased; their bodies will be raised, and united to their souls, they had been in expectation of, to complete their happiness: and this being now done, they will be more like to Christ, and more fit to converse with him. At the death of Christ, he committed his human spirit, or soul, to his Father, and it was that day in paradise; on the third day, when he rose, his soul returned, reentered, and was reunited to his body; and after his resurrection, he continued on earth forty days, showing himself to, and conversing with his disciples. During this time, was his soul less happy than before his resurrection? yea, was it not more so?

5a5. The bodies of the wicked lying in the earth till the thousand years are ended, may be objected to the purity of the new earth, and to the glory of the state of the saints upon it. The purification of it by fire, will, indeed, only affect the surrounding air, and the surface of the earth, or little more, and the figure of it, and its external qualities and circumstances; and not the matter and substance of it, which will remain the same. And as for the bodies of the wicked, that will have been interred in it from the beginning of the world to the end of it, those will be long reduced to their original earth, and will be neither morally impure, nor naturally offensive; and if anything of the latter could be conceived of, the purifying fire may reach so far as entirely to remove that; and as for the bodies of the wicked, which will be burnt to ashes at the conflagration, how those ashes, and the ruins of the old world after the burning, will be disposed of, by the almighty power, and all wise providence of God, it is not easy to say; it is very probable they will be disposed of underground: and this will be so far from detracting from the glorious inhabitation and reigning of the saints with Christ upon it, that it will greatly add to the glory of that triumphant reign; for now all the wicked that ever were in the world, will be under the feet of the saints in the most literal sense; now they will not only tread upon the wicked as ashes, but tread upon the very ashes of the wicked; and so the prophecy in Malachi 4:3 will be literally fulfilled, which respects this very case.

Secondly, to questions.

5b1. What will become of the new earth, after the thousand years of the reign of Christ and his saints on it are ended? whether it will be annihilated or not? My mind has been at an uncertainty about this matter; sometimes inclining one way, and sometimes another; because of the seeming different accounts of it in Isaiah 66:22 where it is said to “remain” before the Lord, and in Revelation 20:11 where it is said to “flee away” from the face of the judge; as may be seen by my “notes” on both places, and by a “correction” at the end of the “fourth” volume on the Old Testament; but my last and present thoughts are, that it will continue for ever; and that the passage in Revelation 20:11 is a rhetorical exaggeration of the glory and greatness of the judge, which appeared such to John in the vision, that the heavens and earth could not bear it, and therefore “seemed” to disappear; the phrase, “from whose face,” which is unusual, seems to suggest and confirm it. I am of opinion therefore, that the new earth will be a sort of an apartment to heaven, whither the saints will pass and repass at their pleasure; and which agrees with other scriptures, which speak of the saints dwelling on, and inheriting the earth for ever.

5b2. Who the Gog and Magog army are, that shall encompass the camp of the saints, when the thousand years are ended? What makes an answer to this the more difficult is, that at the general conflagration of the present earth, all the wicked in it will be burnt up, and none but righteous persons will dwell in the new earth; it is to no purpose therefore, to think of Turks, Tartarinns, Scythians, and other barbarous nations, types of these; nor of any remains of the wicked who escaped the general destruction, as supposed; nor of such frightened at the first appearance of Christ, who fled to the remotest parts, and now resume their courage, and come forth: it is a strange absurd notion of Dr. Burnet, that these will be men born of the earth, generated from the slime of the ground, and the heat of the sun; and increasing and multiplying after the manner of men, by carnal propagation, after a thousand years will become very numerous, as the sand of the sea, and make the attack they are said to do. But there is no need to have recourse to so gross an expedient as this: the persons are at hand, and easy to be met with; they are “the rest of the dead,” the wicked, who live not till the thousand years are ended; and then will live, being raised from the dead, even all the wicked that have been from the beginning of the world; which accounts for their number being as the sand of the sea: and these rising where they died, and were buried, will be in and come from the four quarters of the world; and as they died enemies to Christ, and his saints, they will rise such; hell and the grave will make no change in them; and as they laid down with the “weapons of war, their swords under their heads,” they will be in a readiness, and rise with the same malicious and revengeful spirit; and though it will be a mad enterprise, to attack saints in an immortal state, who cannot die; and Christ, the King of kings, at the head of them; yet when it is considered, that they will rise as weak and feeble: as unable to resist temptation, and as capable of deception as ever; and what with being buoyed up with their own number, and the posse of devils at the head of them; and especially considering the desperateness of their case, and this their last struggle to deliver themselves from eternal ruin; it may not so much be wondered at, that they should engage in this strange undertaking.