shall participate in His glorious reign in heaven,
when they shall be completely delivered from all the power of the enemy and be
with Him forever and ever. They shall be given to know His work with regard to
the final realization of the Kingdom of God, even as He knows the Father's
counsel and is found worthy to open the book with its seven seals. They shall
perfectly know the mind of Christ and He shall have no secrets for them. They
shall concur in His judgments of the world and thus shall partake in them. And
they shall rejoice in the full realization of His perfect victory. And, finally,
this reign of Christ and His saints with respect to the world is such, that
almost until the very end the devil shall be bound with respect to Gog and
Magog, so that he cannot deceive them and gather them for battle against the
camp of the saints.
3.
But this is not the end. For: "when the thousand years are expired, Satan
shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations
which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them
together to battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went
up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about the
beloved city; and fire came down from God out of heaven and destroyed them. And
the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone,
where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and
night forever and ever."
What
is here presented in a separate vision had partly been pictured in a different
setting in preceding chapters. We may gather from chapter 16:12-16 that this
deception of the nations that live on the four quarters of the earth by the
devil, to gather them together for battle, will he realized in the
period of the sixth vial. This is also in harmony with the statement in Rev.
20:3 that "he must be loosed for a little season." Shortly before
the end of this world this final deception of the nations shall take place. In
ch. 16 we read this: "And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the
great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the
kings of the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs
come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out
of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working
miracles which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to
gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold I come as
a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk
naked and they see his shame. And he gathered them together into a place
called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon". In this passage the reference
is, evidently, to the same going forth of the devils to the nations that live
on the four quarters of the earth, the kings of the
whole world, to deceive them and gather them for battle. And we learn besides,
that this deception of the nations through the devil shall proceed immediately
from the antichristian kingdom. Unclean spirits shall proceed from the center
of the antichristian world, and they shall have their influence upon the
nations that live on the four quarters of the earth. It matters not now what is
presented by these unclean spirits. They certainly signify a threefold
influence of the antichristian civilization. And the final result of this
threefold antichristian influence will be that the nations thus affected will
unite their forces for war, the last war that shall ever be fought on earth.
Again, a similar
presentation of the same period of history we find in ch. 17:12-17. There
mention is made of ten kings, that as yet have received no kingdom, but shall
receive power as kings one hour with the beast. The fact that they are kings in
distinction from the antichristian power proper, as well as the fact that
their dominion shall last but for one hour with the beast, that is, "a
little season", suggests that these ten kings are again the same as the
power of Gog and Magog in Rev. 20, and as the kings of the whole world,
and the kings of the east that are mentioned in Rev. 16. If this is correct,
then we learn from the passage in ch. 17, that the first result of the
deceptive influence of the devil, through the medium of the threefold
antichristian influence, will be that the heathen nations of Gog and Magog
shall join into one great world-power with the central antichristian dominion.
For one hour, for a little season, the world-power shall realize its greatest
ambition and a strictly universal empire shall be established. of which also
the heathen, but civilized nations form an integral part. However, this cannot
last. For, ultimately the ten kings shall hate the whore and shall make her
desolate and naked and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire, 17:16. The
ultimate result therefore, of the deception of the devil through the
antichristian influences upon the heathen nations shall be, that they shall be
gathered for battle against the very center of the antichristian dominion.
If we combine all these different elements, which
have bearing undoubtedly upon the same historic event of the future, we may
come to the following conception. In the nominally Christian world shall
ultimately be realized the final consummation of the antichristian world-power,
the power of the beast and the false prophet. It will be an empire in which
shall be represented the highest ambitions of man, and they shall be realized
to the utmost. From a purely humanistic viewpoint it will be a glorious
kingdom. And thoroughly humanistic it will surely be, religiously,
scientifically, socially, industrially, politically. But it will be anti-God,
anti-Christ, and anti-Church. The
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