QUESTIONS ON REVELATION 20.
E. B. Taylor asks seven or eight questions on the twentieth chapter of Revelation. To give answer to all these questions would require an exegesis of the chapter. For me that is impossible. The chapter abounds in figures of speech. Many have read into that chapter things that are not in it. They also make some of it figurative and the rest literal, as the needs of their theory require. With them a day in some of the prophecies is a year, but they take the thousand years as literal. Yet they will not say that the devil is a real snake, nor that the chain is a literal chain, nor that the beast is a real four-footed animal. Here are some of the things in this chapter that I do not know: Who the angel is, what the key is, the great chain, why the devil is called a snake, what the binding means, the thousand years, when the thousand years end, the abyss and how it was sealed, length of the “little time,” who sat on thrones, what judgment was given them, the extent of that judgment, what the beast is, the image, mark of the beast, the war of verse 8, Gog and Magog, the camp of the saints, how devoured by fire, the lake, the beast of verse 10, who the false prophet is, nor how there can be day and night in eternity. Yet the chapter makes some plain statements.
We may not know who the martyrs are, yet it is affirmed of them, and of no one else, that “they lived, and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” When or where this reigning is, was, or is to be, is not stated. But it is stated in verse 6 that those who have part in the first resurrection “shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.” Hence, they are to be priests and to reign at the same time—a royal priesthood. It is plain that they were to reign while they were priests, but Christians are priests now. Leaving out to be, words supplied by the translator, Revelations 1:6 reads thus: “He made us a kingdom, priests unto his God and Father.” Being kings and priests, Christians are a royal priesthood. (See 1 Pet. 2:9.)
In 20:12, John saw the dead standing before the throne. The dead, not a part of the dead. This is in perfect harmony with the Savior’s description of the judgment in Matt. 25:31-46. It is argued by some that this is a judgment of nations—kingdoms—instead of individuals. But nations in the Greek is neuter; but the pronoun them in verse 32 is masculine, and, therefore, refers to people, and not to nations as such. At the judgment, therefore, all—the small and the great—will stand before the throne. This is also made clear in 2 Thess. 1:7-10. There it is declared that Jesus will take vengeance on the wicked “when he shall come to be glorified in his saints.” And the last verse in the twentieth chapter of Revelations shows that some will be at that judgment, whose names are written in the book of life.