Revelation 20:4

RESULT OF OVERTHROWS THE THOUSAND-YEAR REPOSE OF VICTORY AND REIGN THE MILLENNIUM, Revelation 20:4-6.

4. I saw thrones An inauguration of a new and better regimen over the world. The infernals being cast out, the celestials, with benign influences, are crowned as kings. Where John saw the thrones he does not say; but, apparently, they should be in the firmamental heaven, where once (chap. xii) the dragon reigned. And this would represent the place of spiritual natures. Notes on Ephesians 2:2; Ephesians 4:9.

And they sat upon them Namely, those who reigned in the latter part of the verse, the souls of the martyred in the battles with antichrist.

Judgment The authority to judge, or, according to Scripture sense, to rule, was given them. Herein is more completely fulfilled the symbolic promise to the twelve that they should sit on twelve thrones, judging, that is, ruling, the twelve tribes of Israel.

Matthew 19:28. But we see no judging of angels (1 Corinthians 6:2-3, where see note) here.

The souls Not bodies. As it was antichristic spiritual beings who have been dethroned, so it is Christic spiritual beings who are now enthroned. Satan and his angels have heretofore ruled; Christ and his saints shall rule now. In both cases the rulers are spiritual, in the spiritual region, that is, in the spiritual atmosphere overlying the earth, and ruling its populations with spiritual influences and sway.

It was these same martyred souls whom the seer beheld, under the fifth seal, (Revelation 6:9,) lying under the altar, in sad suppression beneath the despotism of the persecutor, calling for retribution and bidden to wait awhile. They have waited; their number is fulfilled, and their regal time has come. This exaltation is the glorious reversal of that humiliation. They were victims then they are kings now. The order of strata is reversed; those who were then underlying are now overlying. But in both cases they are souls, not bodies. In other cases, where the soul signifies the whole person, the idea of disembodied soul is excluded by the narrative, as in Acts 27:37. But here, and in Revelation 6:9, they are the souls of dead men; of persons beheaded with the axe. And the Greek word for beheaded is not in the aorist tense, which would imply that the fact was transient, but the perfect, which implies the continuance of the dead condition of the body. Whatever the soul of a living man may be, the soul of a dead man must be a disembodied soul.

We trace the souls under the altar of Revelation 6:9, through their history to this verse. We find them among the hosts on Mount Zion with the Lamb, in Revelation 14:1-4, where they are in the Lamb’s retinue, following him wherever he goeth, chanting a future victory over Babylon, but not yet reigning. We find them in the armies of heaven, Revelation 19:14, (where see note,) who fight the great battle. We find them here, the exalted, inaugurated trophy of that victory, reigning with the Great Victor.

They lived They were endowed with the element of glorified vitality; by which they surmount and overcome the power of the second death, Revelation 20:6. This is the true resurrection of souls. What is the nature of this life? It is the same life as occurs constantly in these last chapters of Revelation in the phrases book of life, tree of life, water of life, river of life, word of life, eternal life, life. It is the paradisiac life; by which, over and above the mere conscious existence of the soul, or even its regenerate life in this world, it glows with bliss, and expands into an immortal growth and beauty; the principle of celestial life implanted by Christ in the glorified spirit.

The primal sentence, thou shall surely die, included the fulness of death upon the whole man, and upon his everlasting being. That “die” manifests itself, indeed, in the body, by decay and dissolution, which is the first death; it manifests itself in the soul by spiritual depravity and eternal destruction in the world to come, which is the second death. By Christ both these deaths may be reversed; first, by a revival of the soul to a prospective celestial life here, to be exalted and continued in a glorified spiritual state hereafter, which is the first resurrection; and by a revival and reorganization of the body to an eternal union with the soul, which is the second resurrection. Thus, the first resurrection is a resurrection of souls, the second a resurrection of bodies.

Nor are we quite alone in this interpretation. Grotius, in his commentary upon the passage, says, “The souls which are in hades are not all said ( ζην ) to live; but those only which are translated to beneath the throne of glory, as the Jews say; for so they call the perfected state of souls before the universal resurrection.” Upon the words ουκ εζησαν , they lived not, he remarks, “That is, they remained in hades in that state which was according to the life which they had lived on earth.”

That the blessed souls were said by the Jews to live this paradisiac life in this intermediate state (located by them as under the throne of glory) the following beautiful passages from eminent doctors of the Jewish Church will show, for which we are indebted to Schoettgen’s Horae Hebraicae.

Midrasch Coheleth, (fol. 90:4,) commenting upon the biblical words, “for the living know that they must die,” says: “They are meant who, even in death, are called living. ‘But the dead know not any thing.’ The impious are meant, who, even while active in life, are called dead. Whence we prove this: that the just, even in death, are called living.” Jalkut Simeoni, (part ii, fol. 109:3:) “No difference is there between the just, living or dead, except that they differ in name.” Synopsis Sohar, (p. 138, n. vii:) “Jacob our father, and Moses our teacher, upon whom be peace, are not dead; and so all who are in their perfected state, because the true life consists of this. Although it is written of them that they are dead, this is to be understood in respect to us, not to them.”

That the blessed intermediate state is called under the throne of glory appears as follows: Schoettgen, upon Revelation 6:9, “Souls under the Altar,” quotes Sohar Chadasch, (fol. 22, 1.) Said Rabbi Jacob, “All the souls are taken from under the throne of the glory of God, that they may (at the resurrection) resume their body, as a father takes his child.”

The same upon Sol. Song of Solomon 8:1: “By vine is meant the righteous soul, which in heaven is planted under the throne of glory.” In another place, “How loved by God is that soul which is taken from under the throne of God’s glory from the holy place the land of the living.”

Schoettgen also shows that the same throne of glory was the place of the Messiah in his exaltation. “Messiah was to be descended from the fathers, and in human flesh to redeem us; then he was in the same to occupy the throne of glory.” Vol. ii, p. 439.

From these extracts the meaning of this language from an ancient Jew is plain. The disembodied spirits of the saints, being in the perfected state, are said, in contradistinction to the wicked, to LIVE, and to live with the glorified ( Christ) Messiah. This is the same with the abode of Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom; the same as the “being absent from the body” and the “being present with the Lord” of St. Paul; the same as the being in paradise with Christ of the penitent thief; and the same as the life and reign of souls of St. John.

Reigned Became the overlying, controlling, spiritual power over the nations of the earth, as Satan and his angels once were.

With Christ Yet all their victory and reign is in unification with the Redeemer. As they fought his last battle through his one sword, so they reign through his one sceptre.

This picture of living and reigning souls, however, is given (like the mountains of Revelation 17:9) as a double symbol, or more properly, as a symbol and a specimen. As a symbol the souls stand to represent the victory over antichrist. Hence only those who are martyred in that war seem to be made visible. As a specimen they serve to show the true nature of the first resurrection; that is, the glorified triumphant state of the imparadised disembodied spirits, in the glorified side of hades, who have won the battle of life, and await in bliss, incomplete yet wonderful, for the second resurrection. Hence, as a specimen of the nature of the first resurrection, though these alone are in the foreground and visible, yet all the spirits of the departed just, though in the background, are by right and just implication there. Hence, we look to this passage as describing the blessedness of all our departed brethren who have passed through the portals of death to the land of blessed spirits. It is to this blood-washed throng that we hope to go from our death-bed in Christ. See our article, on “The Millennium of Revelation 20:0,” in the “Methodist Quarterly Review” for January, 1843, for a full discussion of this whole subject.