What is the meaning of the great chain in Revelation 20?

Question 08082

The great chain of Revelation 20 is one of those details that decides far more than it appears to. How you read it determines whether you place the millennium in the future or in the present, and that in turn shapes your entire understanding of prophecy.

So this is not a question about ironmongery. It is a question about whether the passage describes something still to come, and I want to set out why I am convinced that it does.

The Vision Itself

The text is Revelation 20:1-3. An angel comes down from heaven, holding the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He seizes the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and binds him for a thousand years, throwing him into the pit and shutting and sealing it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended.

Four actions are described in sequence. Seizing, binding, throwing, and sealing. Each one is more restrictive than the last, and the accumulation is the point.

The Greek word for the chain is halusis, the ordinary term for a manacle or fetter, used in Acts of Peter’s chains in prison and of Paul’s imprisonment. It is not an exotic apocalyptic term.

Why the Great Chain Is Not the Present Age

The amillennial reading holds that this binding took place at the cross and describes the present church age, with Satan restrained from deceiving the nations so that the gospel can spread among them.

I cannot make that work with the rest of the New Testament. Peter, writing well after the cross, says the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Paul says he is the god of this world who blinds the minds of unbelievers, and that we wrestle against powers in the heavenly places.

A being described that way is not sealed in a pit. Whatever restraint the cross accomplished, and it accomplished a great deal, the great chain of Revelation 20 describes something categorically more total than anything we currently observe. I have written on his present activity in what Satan is doing now.

The Weight of the Fourfold Description

Consider how much John piles up. If he had written only that Satan was bound, an argument for a partial restraint might stand. But he was seized, bound, thrown into the abyss, and the abyss was shut and sealed over him.

You do not seal a pit over someone who is still at large. The imagery is of complete removal from the sphere of activity, and it is reinforced by the stated purpose, that he might not deceive the nations any longer.

That last phrase is decisive for me. If the great chain describes the present age, then Satan is not currently deceiving the nations, and I would find that a difficult claim to sustain by reading any newspaper.

The Angel and the Key

A detail worth pausing on. The one who does this is an angel, unnamed, coming down from heaven with a key. Not Michael, not a heavenly army, not the Lord Himself. One angel with a key and a chain.

That tells you the true measure of the contest. The being who deceived the whole world, empowered the beast and made war on the saints is removed by a single unnamed servant carrying out an errand.

The key matters too. The abyss is locked, and the key belongs to heaven. Revelation 9 shows the pit opened at God’s command, and here it is shut by the same authority. Nothing about the great chain suggests a struggle, and nothing suggests Satan has any say in the matter. See also what the abyss or bottomless pit is.

Is the Great Chain Literal?

A fair question, and my answer is that I do not know precisely, and that it does not much matter. A spiritual being is not restrained by iron in the way a man is, so there is probably an accommodation here, describing an actual and total restraint in terms we can picture.

But notice that this is a question about the mechanism rather than the event. Whether the chain is metal or is imagery for something we have no vocabulary for, the binding itself is presented as an actual occurrence at an actual point in the sequence, lasting an actual thousand years.

That is where I would locate the literalness. Not in metallurgy, but in the reality and the duration of what is described.

The Thousand Years

The phrase thousand years appears six times in Revelation 20, which is a striking amount of repetition for something supposedly symbolic of an indefinite period. John could hardly have laboured the point more.

The same chapter describes two resurrections separated by that period, the reign of those who were beheaded for their testimony, and the Great White Throne judgement at its end. Those elements are almost universally taken literally. It is only the thousand years that gets spiritualised, and I have never seen a consistent reason offered for the selective treatment.

Reading it plainly gives a coherent picture. Jesus returns, the enemy is removed, and He reigns from Jerusalem over a real earth for a real period, with the covenant promises to Israel fulfilled to Israel.

Why He Is Released Afterwards

The passage says he must be released for a little while, and that troubles people. After a thousand years of righteous rule, Satan is loosed and immediately gathers a rebellion from the nations, numberless as the sand of the sea.

The purpose seems to be demonstration. A thousand years of perfect government, with the Lord Himself present and reigning, and the human heart still turns the moment the option is offered. That settles for ever the question of whether the problem was environment.

The rebellion is over almost 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. I have written on this in why Satan is released after the millennium.

What This Settles for Us

The great chain is a picture of finality arriving in stages. The cross secured the victory, the binding removes the enemy from the field, and the lake of fire concludes the matter permanently. Each stage is certain and none of them is in doubt.

For a believer living now, in the middle stage where the lion still prowls, that sequence is worth holding on to. The prowling has an end date, and the end is not a close contest.

It also guards us from two errors. It stops us pretending the enemy is already neutralised, which leaves people unprepared. And it stops us fearing him as though the outcome were open, which is the greater error of the two.

A Note on Reading Apocalyptic Language

Someone will object that Revelation is a symbolic book and that pressing details like a great chain is naive. I have some sympathy with the caution, since the book is plainly full of imagery, and nobody thinks the Lamb has literal horns.

But symbolism in Scripture points to realities rather than dissolving them. When John sees a Lamb standing as though slain, the imagery represents an actual person who actually died. The symbol has a referent, and the referent is concrete.

So the question is never simply literal or symbolic. The question is what the imagery represents, and in Revelation 20 the imagery of the great chain represents a total restraint of an actual being for an actual period, marked out with a number John repeats six times. Deo, the verb used for the binding, is the ordinary word for tying someone up, and John uses it without any signal that we should soften it.

So, now what?

One more note on method. I try to read prophecy the way I read the rest of Scripture, which is to take it plainly unless the text signals otherwise, and to let the clearer passages govern the less clear. Applied here, that means the plain statements of Peter and Paul about the enemy’s present activity govern how I read a disputed vision, rather than the other way round. 1 Peter 5:8 tells us he prowls around like a roaring lion, and a sealed pit is not a description of prowling.

If you have been taught that the millennium is now and that this binding has already happened, read Revelation 20 alongside 1 Peter 5 and 2 Corinthians 4 and see whether the descriptions can be made to fit the same period. In my judgement they cannot.

Then take the comfort that is actually on offer here. One angel, one key, one great chain, and a being who has troubled the world since Eden is put away without a struggle.

What would change in how you face this week if you took that ending as seriously as you take the present difficulty?

“Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.”

Revelation 20:1-2, ESV