Revelation 20:8 Commentary and Bible Study

The dragon is no longer bound. He will be able to deceive the nations again, and he will immediately gather them to battle. Their number is as the sand of the sea, because all nations are united in this battle against the Lord and his people. The reference to Gog and Magog ties this passage to Ezekiel 38 and 39. There we find a prophecy about a great that attack on Israel which God will destroy utterly. Fairbairn says about Gog (the root name of the word Magog, or place of Gog) that ‘the description is intended to possess an ideal, not a real character.’ He argues that, ‘The nations mentioned are all selected from the distance – remote, in the first instance, from the land of Israel, in the extremities of the earth, and also man of them far from one another, and consequently the most unlikely naturally to act in concert for any particular purpose.’ Whether that is true or not, this is a massive force spoken of in Ezekiel, which attacks Israel. The battle takes place on the mountains of Israel and results in the whole land being covered with the slain of the enemy (Ezekiel 39:2-5). The Lord himself fights for Israel. It is the same passage which is referred to in Revelation 19:17 where the fowls of heaven are invited to gather together ‘unto the supper of the great God’. This reference to the same prophecy in Ezekiel in both Revelation 19 and 20, makes this passaged, not consecutive to one another, but parallel.When the last of the elect is gathered in, Satan will be free to do what he cannot now do: make this absolutely cohesive and international, wipe out the Christian testimony, wipe out the church, destroy everything. and there will be the great battle to do all this. We’re not told the details, and how it will happen. Elsewhere we read of Satan having at his disposal the power to work signs and wonders. What might they be? Seemingly but phony, convincing astronomical matters? Discovery of things in nuclear physics and in the movements of theories concerning big bangs and everything developing in such a way that people everywhere are absolutely convinced of the rationalistic explanation for their existence? We see that coming to birth in our time. But it will be vicious, whatever it is. And yet, even as Satan orchestrates this final assault, things will be going wrong. We read about that in the previous scans. The beast out of the sea will turn against the beast out of the land. You can see Satan organising a massive worldwide attack on faith, and Christ, and the church. Even as he does so, his civil agencies begin to attack false religions, and other agencies at his disposal, and Babylon. Babylon is destroyed in a previous scare by the forces of government, international power and control. Satan's empire is at war with itself, even as he makes his great bid for world dominance. How long will it last? Some expositors say – and they argue quite strongly for this – a generation, 40 years. The symbolic time hints and the words in 2 Thessalonians hint at something short. 2 Thessalonians 2 gives the impression that Satan will have no sooner manifested himself, than almost at once Christ destroys him with the brightness of his coming.