What happens at the end of the millennium?

Question 10095.

The end of the millennium brings one of the strangest sequences in Scripture. After a thousand years of Christ reigning in person from Jerusalem, with the enemy bound and righteousness enforced, there is a rebellion. Not a small one either. Revelation says the number of the rebels is like the sand of the sea.

That single fact tells us more about the human heart than a shelf of books on the subject. Change the environment entirely, remove the tempter, install a perfect ruler, and unregenerate people will still choose rebellion when given the chance. The end of the millennium is God’s final and unanswerable demonstration of what sin actually is.

Satan is released

Revelation 20 says that when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth (Revelation 20:7-8). He was bound at the beginning of the period so that he could not deceive the nations until the thousand years were finished.

People ask why God would release him at all, and it is a fair question. The answer Scripture implies is that the release exposes something that would otherwise remain hidden. Satan’s release after the millennium does not create the rebellion. It reveals hearts that had been outwardly conforming to a rule they never loved.

Notice too that he is released rather than escaping. Even at the end of the millennium the enemy operates only within limits that God sets, which has been true from the book of Job onwards.

It is worth being clear about what the binding involved. John says Satan was thrown into the pit, shut in and sealed over him, so that he could not deceive the nations. That is not restriction, it is removal, and it means the entire thousand year period runs with the enemy off the board. Everything that happens at the end of the millennium therefore happens in a world that has known life without him and is choosing to have him back.

The final rebellion

The rebels are described as Gog and Magog, gathered from the four corners of the earth, marching up over the broad plain and surrounding the camp of the saints and the beloved city. This is a different event from the invasion of Ezekiel 38, and I take the names here as a deliberate echo rather than a repetition. The two Gog and Magog passages describe separate assaults a thousand years apart.

Where do these people come from? During the Millennium, survivors of the Tribulation enter in natural bodies and have children, and those children grow up under Christ’s rule without automatically sharing faith in Him. Outward submission is enforced; inward allegiance is not. Over a thousand years an enormous population accumulates, and some of it is unbelieving.

The rebellion ends before it begins. Fire comes down from heaven and consumes them, and the devil is thrown into the lake of fire where the Beast and the False Prophet already are, to be tormented day and night for ever. There is no contest at the end of the millennium, and there is no second chance for the enemy.

There is a sobering realism in this for anyone who thinks a Christian upbringing guarantees a Christian heart. These rebels grew up hearing the truth from the best possible source, in the best possible circumstances, and it did not save them. Proximity to the light is not the same as receiving it, which is a lesson worth taking from the end of the millennium into any church family.

Why God permits it

I think there are two purposes. The first is evidential. Every excuse humanity has offered for its rebellion is stripped away. Bad environment, poor leadership, oppressive systems, the influence of the enemy: all removed, and the outcome is the same. Rebellion after a thousand years of visible rule is the final proof that the problem was never circumstantial.

The second is judicial. The rebellion brings latent unbelief into the open so that judgement falls on what people have actually chosen rather than on what God foresaw. Scripture consistently judges people for revealed deeds, and the end of the millennium provides the occasion for the last of those revelations.

There is a third purpose, and it concerns us more directly. The rebellion at the end of the millennium answers the question every social reformer eventually asks. If we could only fix the conditions, would people be good? God runs the experiment publicly, with perfect conditions and a perfect ruler, and the result is filed permanently in the record. The problem is not the environment. It never was.

The Great White Throne

Then comes the judgement. John sees a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and sky flee away. The dead, great and small, stand before the throne, and books are opened, including the book of life. Each is judged according to what he had done (Revelation 20:12).

This is the second resurrection, the raising of the unsaved dead, and it happens only at the end of the millennium. Believers are not present as defendants; the Judgement Seat of Christ dealt with their service long before, and it concerned rewards rather than destiny.

The outcome is stated without softening. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. That is the second death, and Scripture presents it as final.

Notice what is not in this scene. There is no jury, no appeal, no advocate for the defence, and no suggestion that anyone protests the verdict. Everything is read from books that were compiled during ordinary lives lived in ordinary places. The judgement at the end of the millennium is not arbitrary; it is documentary (Revelation 20:11-15).

A new heaven and a new earth

Immediately after the judgement John sees a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. The New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Whether this is a brand new creation or a thoroughly renewed one is a question I do not press to a conclusion, since Scripture uses language that could support either. What is not in doubt is that it is physical, permanent, and free of the curse. The end of the millennium is not the end of embodied life. It is the beginning of it under permanent conditions.

And then the sentence the whole Bible has been reaching for: the dwelling place of God is with man. He will wipe away every tear. Death shall be no more, neither mourning nor crying nor pain, for the former things have passed away.

John’s description of the new order is largely a list of absences, and each one is worth feeling. No sea, which to an exile on Patmos meant separation. No night. No temple, because the Lord God and the Lamb are its temple. No sun or moon needed, since the glory of God gives it light. No curse. Everything that has made human life partial and painful is named and removed (Revelation 21:22-27).

What the end of the millennium teaches us

The end of the millennium answers the question of whether a better world would fix us. It would not. Given ideal conditions, humanity rebels, which means our need is not for improvement but for new hearts. That is why the gospel offers regeneration rather than reform.

It also shows how patient God is with evil, and how decisively He ends it. A thousand years of restraint, one final rebellion, and then a settlement that never needs revisiting. There will be no third act.

It also teaches us something about God’s patience. He does not crush the final rebellion before it forms, and He does not deny anyone the dignity of a real choice. A thousand years of visible, benevolent rule are offered first, and only then is the matter settled. Nobody at the end of the millennium will be able to claim they were rushed.

So, now what?

Let this shape how you think about your own heart. If a thousand years of perfect government cannot produce faith, then no amount of church attendance, respectable behaviour or religious atmosphere will produce it in you either. Only the new birth will.

And let the last chapter do its work on the tired. Every tear wiped away, death abolished, pain gone, God dwelling with His people permanently. That is where this is going. When did you last let yourself think about it for more than a minute?

There is one more thing to take from this. Everything you are working for now that belongs to the Lord survives all of it, through the Tribulation, through the kingdom, through the end of the millennium and into the new creation. Very little else does. What does that do to your sense of what is worth your Tuesday?

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

Revelation 21:4 (ESV)