Why does anyone rebel after a thousand years of Christ’s visible rule?

Question 10192.

The millennial rebellion is one of the strangest paragraphs in the Bible, and one of the most searching. Jesus has reigned in person from Jerusalem for a thousand years, the earth has been full of the knowledge of the Lord, Satan has been shut away, justice has been swift and honest, and then the moment the restraint is lifted a crowd like the sand of the sea marches out to make war on the city of the great King.

How can that possibly happen? I find that people either dismiss the passage as symbolic because it seems irrational, or they read it and go quiet, because they recognise something in it about themselves. Let me take it slowly.

What Scripture actually says about the millennial rebellion

Revelation 20:7 to 10 gives us the account. When the thousand years are ended, Satan is released from his prison and goes out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, gathering Gog and Magog for battle. Their number is like the sand of the sea. They march up over the broad plain and surround the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire comes down from heaven and consumes them. The devil is then thrown into the lake of fire for ever.

Notice how little drama John allows the millennial rebellion. There is no battle described, no exchange of blows, no uncertainty about the outcome. The rebels gather and they are consumed. Whatever else this passage is doing, it is not presenting a genuine threat to the throne of Jesus.

Notice also that this is not the same event as the Gog of Ezekiel 38 and 39, which belongs earlier in the prophetic programme, nor is it Armageddon, which happens a thousand years before. I have set out the distinctions in my article on Gog and Magog in Revelation 20.

A kingdom of natural bodies and mixed hearts

The answer to the puzzle begins with who is actually living in the Millennium. Glorified believers reign with Jesus, but they are not the whole population. Survivors of the Tribulation enter the kingdom in natural bodies, they marry, they have children, and those children have children, across ten centuries of peace and long life described in Isaiah 65:20 to 23.

Every one of those descendants is born with a fallen nature. The Millennium does not repeal Romans 5:12. It removes Satan, it removes injustice, it removes war and it removes the pretence that our problems are only environmental, but it does not remove the sinful heart from a child born in Galilee in the year eight hundred of the kingdom.

So the millennial rebellion is not a failure of the King. It is the exposure of the human race under the best conditions this planet will ever know. Outward submission under a righteous government is not the same thing as a heart born again, and a thousand years of good order will prove that with painful clarity.

There is a second reason the population matters. Isaiah pictures long life restored, so a person reaching a hundred is still reckoned young, which means the kingdom will be full of people who have known nothing but the reign of Jesus for generations. Familiarity, as any pastor’s child could tell you, is not the same thing as faith, and the millennial rebellion is that truth on a national scale.

Why perfect surroundings do not change the heart

We are inclined to believe that people go wrong because of bad circumstances. Improve education, remove poverty, dismantle injustice and human beings will flourish. The Millennium is that experiment run by the King Himself with unlimited resources, and it still ends with an army on the plain.

Scripture has told us this all along. Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. The Hebrew word there, leb, covers the whole inner life of thought and will, not just the emotions. Jesus located defilement inside a person rather than outside in Mark 7:21 to 23, and He said it while standing in a world with plenty of external excuses available.

There is something almost merciful in how the millennial rebellion settles the argument. Nobody in eternity will be able to say that they would have believed if only conditions had been fairer. Conditions were as fair as they will ever be, and the human heart still wanted a throne of its own.

Satan released and the final deception

Why release him at all? John does not tell us directly, and I refuse to invent a reason God has not given. What the text does show is that Satan is released, not escaped. He is on a chain from beginning to end, as I discuss in the article on his release, and his final act is permitted rather than achieved.

What he does is what he has always done. He deceives. He does not raise an army by force; he persuades. The nations who go out are those who had complied without ever having been converted, and the moment a persuasive voice offers them independence they take it. That tells you something about the difference between conformity and faith.

The end is instant. Fire from heaven, and then the lake of fire for the deceiver himself, which is the final answer to the question of what happens to Satan. The millennial rebellion is his last work and it lasts no time at all.

What the millennial rebellion proves about sin

The theological value of this passage is that it closes off every remaining excuse. Sin is not ignorance, because in the Millennium the knowledge of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. Sin is not injustice, because the King judges with equity. Sin is not the devil making people do things, because the devil has been absent for ten centuries and the capacity for revolt was waiting all the same.

Sin is a settled disposition of the will against God, and only new birth changes it. That is why I hold so firmly that regeneration is a work of God received through faith rather than an improvement scheme. You cannot educate a rebel into a son.

It also explains why evangelism will still matter in the kingdom. Children born during those years will need to trust the King they can see, and some of them will not. Visibility is not the same as saving faith, which is worth remembering the next time somebody says they would believe if God would only show Himself.

Notice as well what the millennial rebellion says about the nature of worship. Under a perfect government, compliance is the path of least resistance. Everyone will bow because bowing is sensible, and only the heart knows whether the bowing meant anything. That is why God has always looked past the posture to the person.

What it proves about the justice of God

By the end of Revelation 20 nobody can accuse God of having judged the world without giving it every chance. He has dealt with humanity under conscience, under law, under grace and finally under the personal government of His Son, and the verdict is consistent. The millennial rebellion is the last piece of evidence entered before the Great White Throne, which follows immediately in the chapter and which I cover in the article on that judgement.

That is why the fire falls without a hearing. There is nothing left to establish. The books at the throne will confirm what the plain has already displayed.

And then it is over. The next thing John sees is a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells because everyone in it has been made new. The rebellion is not the end of the story; it is the last shadow before the light.

There is one further comfort in it. The rebellion is put down without a battle, which tells you that the security of the kingdom never depended on the loyalty of its subjects. Jesus does not reign because the numbers are with Him. He reigns because He is the rightful King, and the millennial rebellion changes nothing about that.

So, now what?

Here is where this lands on us. If a thousand years of the visible reign of Jesus would not soften a heart that has not been born again, then no amount of church attendance, Christian family, good teaching or comfortable circumstances will do it either. Proximity is not conversion. You can sit under the sound of the gospel for forty years and still be a bystander.

So examine yourself, gently but honestly. Do you love the King, or do you simply live in a country where He is respected? And if you know the difference has been settled in your case, who around you is complying without believing?

And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth.

Revelation 20:7 and 8 (ESV)