Bible Questions and Answers

Can you explain Revelation 20:2,3?

Revelation 20:1-3 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. 2 He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; 3 and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.

Revelation is a book of symbols. Its purpose is to signify future events in symbols. Chapter 20 describes events following the return of Jesus Christ to establish the kingdom of God and reign over the mortal population of the earth for 1000 years.

Satan (a transliteration of the Hebrew meaning adversary) is not the fallen angel of Christian mythology. Satan is the personification of the opposition to God that comes from human nature.

• Mark 7:15-23
• James 1:14-16

The bottomless pit represents a state of non-existence. This is made plain in Revelation 17:8. ‘is not’ – i.e. does not exist = in the bottomless pit. Satan bound in the bottomless pit represents the suppression of the lawlessness arising from within man for the 1000-year duration of Christ’s reign over the mortal population of the earth. All will be fully aware of the true God and his precepts, and there will be no escape for criminal behaviour with rulers who possess the divine nature and are able to discern the thoughts of men. At the end of the millennium ‘Satan’ is released from the ‘bottomless pit’ meaning that the restraint on the evil that comes from within men will be withdrawn to allow a final rebellion. Revelation 20:7-10

The lake of fire represents total destruction.

The ‘devil’ is destroyed with the other symbolic entities – joining the ‘beast’ and the ‘false prophet’ along with ‘death’ and ‘hades’ – the grave, in the symbolic ‘lake of fire’.

What follows is the second resurrection and the final judgment, after which all who live on will possess the divine nature. God will live in and with His people forever on a renewed earth restored to its original condition as a paradise.

I hope you find this helpful.

God bless,
Glenn