Revelation 20:7 - Printer Friendly

ESV: And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison

NIV: When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison

NASB: When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison,

CSB: When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison

NLT: When the thousand years come to an end, Satan will be let out of his prison.

KJV: And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,

NKJV: Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison

At the end of Christ's thousand-year reign on earth, Satan is released from the bottomless pit. He is not paroled or put on probation, but let go. Why? His release is not intended to see whether prison time has reformed him. He is incorrigible. His release is intended to see whether people born during the millennium submitted to Christ's rule from the heart or simply because they had to submit. Did they experience a new birth or not?

The millennium is a period of peace and plenty, but these factors are insufficient to cause people to love and obey Christ. A perfect environment does not guarantee a perfect relationship with God. Adam and Eve lived in a perfect environment but they sinned. Even with Satan in prison for a thousand years the human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), so human beings are capable of rebelling against God. The following verses of chapter 20 make this fact abundantly clear.

In point of fact, this lesson is probably why God chooses to release Satan. Much of what happens in the end times is meant to prove that God's judgment is well-deserved. No matter how much proof, evidence, or experience people are given, some will never submit to God. Those who reject Christ have no excuse (Romans 1:18–20).

Revelation 20:4–10 focuses on the reign of Christ during the millennium: the thousand years of Christ's rule on earth, as well as what happens at the end of that era. The millennial reign begins after the Devil is imprisoned in the bottomless pit (Revelation 20:1–3) and before the unrighteous dead of all periods of history are judged and consigned to the lake of fire (Revelation 20:11–15). These events precede the descent of the New Jerusalem from heaven (Revelation 21).

Revelation chapter 20 represents the final lesson, final judgment, and final victory of the end times. Satan is bound, but not destroyed, and released after a thousand years of peace and righteousness. Proving that no evidence or reason to believe in and follow Jesus is enough for those determined to rebel, some follow Satan and are destroyed in a rebellion. Those who died without faith in Christ, through all of history, are resurrected to face the great white throne judgment. There, they are sentenced for sin and consigned eternally to the lake of fire.

This chapter comes between the account of our Lord's decisive victory at Armageddon and the descent of the New Jerusalem from heaven to earth. It focuses on the beginning of Jesus' reign on the earth and the great white throne judgment when unbelievers from all periods of history are judged and sentenced to eternal suffering in the lake of fire. Daniel 7:18, Isaiah 11, Joel 3:16–21, Obadiah 1:21, and Micah 4:2 are just a few of the Old Testament references to the reign of Jesus on the earth. After this point in the end times, evil has been entirely and completely defeated.

The word ''revelation'' means ''an unveiling or disclosure.'' This writing unveils future events such as the rapture, three series of judgments that will fall on the earth during the tribulation, the emergence of the Antichrist, the persecution of Israel and her amazing revival, as well as Jesus' second coming with His saints to the earth, the judgment of Satan and his followers, and finally, the eternal state. This content, combined with the original Greek term apokalypsis, is why we now refer to an end-of-the-world scenario as ''an apocalypse.''