Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and to the word of God, who had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or on their hands. They came to life, and reigned with Christ 1000 years.
The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with him 1000 years.
And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the world--that is, Gog and Magog--to gather them for battle; their number is as the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad Earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from Heaven and consumed them. And the Devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and the will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
1 comment:
The specificity of this appears odd... "No, you only got thrown to wild beasts for Jesus; you'll have to take a nap! All folks who got beheaded, step over here!"
One thousand years, between the end of secular time and the beginning of something else. God can do many things without me understanding a reason for them, but this one is a stretch! Well, okay, this is not a purely theological issue for the author. It could make more sense if someone he cared about literally was beheaded, and so assuming there was a special reward for that suffering was important to him... Also the ancient assumption that what happens to our bodies when we're done with them matters!
But after all this, Satan demands a rematch! And here we have all these people, who (I gather) have died, and been resurrected, who still don't have a clue what's going on, are still ready to fight against the Good Guys. Distinctly odd...
and where are these four corners? We're on a Flat Earth here, folks! This is dream-landscape, not literal geography! And elements of the dreamer's obsessions keep recurring in various forms, as he labors to sort out their significance & resolve them. (We've got one strange individual dreaming all this, but I gather we're all a bit strange in our dreams, & this guy is dreaming for billions of us!)
And the Devil gets tormented, diabolically. Forever, as that doesn't seem to improve him any.
But God is not merely a being of inexhaustible love & forgiveness, but one of continually amazing creativity. God can do better than this!--and as I hope to clarify in a coming post, we're seeing a fundamental misconception at work here. It isn't just that this Devil is imaginary (because the phenomena he symbolizes, and the ingenuity of his manipulations, are beyond question!) He is not a "being" in the way a "human being" is; neither is he a kind of entity that can suffer--or rejoice--or experience anything whatsoever.
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