I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Now we were looking at the first part of this verse in our previous study, and tonight we are going to look at the last phrase here: "Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death." We know that this is the Lord Jesus Christ, the "one like unto the Son of man," that is speaking and giving divine revelation to the Apostle John. John has turned to look at the one who is speaking to him, and everything we have read regarding the description of this individual that was "like unto the Son of man" matches perfectly with the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one that "liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore."
Also, it says, "...and have the keys of hell and of death." This means that the Lord Jesus Christ possesses the keys of hell and death. We are not surprised at that; we would expect that, since He is eternal God Himself, but what exactly does that mean---that Christ has in His possession the "keys of hell and of death?"
We are going to look at this word *key* or *keys* in a few verses, in order to better understand what is being said here. We are going to begin in the Old Testament, in the Book of Isaiah. So let us turn back to Isaiah 22:20-23:
And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah: And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand: and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father's house.
This is very interesting to us since it mentions that the "key of the house of David" will be laid upon this man's shoulder, and this man is said to be "Eliakim the son of Hilkiah." Now Eliakim was over the house in the days of Hezekiah, King of Judah. We are not told too much about this individual, but we can know what his name means. It means "God of raising," or "God of rising up," and that would fit the idea of the Lord Jesus Christ who rose from the dead and resurrected. So, the name Eliakim, we can see, would relate to the Lord Jesus Himself.
He is the one, God says, who "has the key of the house of David." It is laid upon His shoulder, so "he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open." This lets us know that the key is used to open doors and to close doors, and what this key opens no one is able to shut, and what this key shuts, no one is able to open. You know, we are reminded, immediately, of what we read a little further along in Revelation 3:7:
And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth;
This is basically a quote from what we just read in Isaiah, chapter 22, and, yet, we know that here the one who is in view is Jesus Christ Himself: He is the one that is holy; He is the one that is true, as it says in John 14:6:
...I am the way, the truth, and the life...
This can only apply to the Lord Jesus, and that would mean that Eliakim is a type and a figure of Christ Himself. Notice that it says, "he that hath the key of David," just as we read in Isaiah. In the Bible David is a figure of Christ. Actually, the name David is sometimes used of Jesus Himself, and that name means, "beloved." He is the "beloved of the Father."
So, we see how Jesus is the only one that could be in view, who has the "key of David," and, again, the key is for opening and shutting. And, once again, God is emphasizing the important truth that what Jesus opens, no one can shut, and what Jesus shuts, no man can open. Let us look at an example of this in Revelation, chapter 20, and we will see Jesus using this key in order to shut up the devil. It says in Revelation 20:1:
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
Now, the "bottomless pit" would be a figure or representation of "hell." It is not an actual place, but it is just a figure of speech that God is using. But, remember, in our verse in Revelation 1:18, the "one like unto the Son of man" has the "keys of hell and of death." And, here, we find an angel coming down from heaven, and the angel would have to be Christ because He possesses the key of the bottomless pit, or the key of hell. Remember, Jesus is the "messenger of the Covenant," and the Greek word translated as "angel" oftentimes can also properly be translated as "messenger," so we should read that as, "I saw a messenger come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand."
Then it says in Revelation 20:2-3:
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
Well, we have the other element now, in this passage---the key of Christ, of David, is here---and it is called here the "key to the bottomless pit," and the messenger takes the key, and with a great chain in His hand, "He laid hold on the dragon." This term, "laid hold" is used in Matthew 14 when Herod laid hold of John, and cast him into prison. That is exactly what Christ is doing; He is arresting Satan, in a sense, and He laid hold on him, "and bound him a thousand years," which we know is a figurative number. (Remember, this is the Bible, and if we look at it literally, we are going to be going down wrong paths, and, so, we have to look for the spiritual meaning.) The number "thousand" in the Bible points to completeness, so Satan was bound, and when we search the Bible, we discover that binding took place at the cross, and that is when Jesus "laid hold upon him and bound him for a thousand years," or for the completeness of the New Testament age, or the church age, which actually worked out to be a literal 1,955 years in length. He "cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up."
Now once Christ shut up the devil, then no one could open that pit. No one could loose him. It would require God Himself to loose Satan, and that is exactly what God did, where it says in Revelation 20:7:
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,
This was all according to God's plan. He took that same key and opened up the bottomless pit, and loosed Satan, in order to allow him to enter into the churches as the "man of sin," to rise as the "beast" that would destroy the churches and congregations of the world, and would prepare the world for judgment day, during the period of the great tribulation.
Here, we see the key as it is being used to throw Satan into the pit and to lock it up; He shut him up for that period of time and, of course, Satan was not cast into a literal pit, so that also helps us to understand that the *key* is a key to spiritual things. It is a key that can close spiritual doors, or open spiritual doors. It is a key that can open up the spiritual door to hell, and just so we know that the "bottomless pit" does represent *hell*, turn to 2Peter 2:4:
For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
Satan and the demons were "cast down to hell," but it is not a place---there is no literal place called *hell*. It is a condition. It was to be under the wrath of God, as God provided no salvation for the devil, or any of the other fallen angels that accompanied him, when he rebelled against God. They were cast into darkness and they were bound when Christ went to the cross in demonstrating what He had done before the foundation of the world. They were, in a sense, thrown into a "bottomless pit" and the door was shut, even though they were still conscious and had existence, and were still going about in the world. Satan was still going around as a roaring lion, seeking whom to devour; he was still active in the churches. He just was not the supreme ruler there.
So God, in giving us this language, is explaining to us that He limited Satan's activities during the church age, to a large degree, and Satan was not able to do all the evil deeds that he certainly would have desired to do. Just to understand that, take a look around at the church and the world over the last twenty years, and look at the tremendous increase in evil that the world has never known or experienced in all of its history; you can quickly see that Satan was bound and limited by God in his destructive ways, and in his ability to light the flames of evil, and to fan the flames, so that wickedness would multiply in the earth. The Lord kept that in reserve for the time of the end when Satan would be loosed, and in 1988 Satan was loosed, and throughout the twenty three years of the great tribulation, and we see many of the results of that in the church and in the world today.
That is one place we read of this "key of hell and of death" in actual use. There is another place in Revelation where we also find the language of the *key* being described, and that is in Revelation 9:1-2:
And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
Here, once again, we find the "key of the bottomless pit," the "key of hell and of death." We do not have time, and it is not the proper place, to go into a study of Revelation 8, which sets up Revelation 9, as God describes His judgment on the churches in Revelation, chapter 8. Then He states, in verse 13, that there are "three woes to the inhabiters of the earth." And it can be proven from the Bible that the "three woes" is language describing the transition from the judgment on the churches (typified by the "third part," in chapter 8), and now is expanded to all the world, to all the unsaved inhabiters of the earth. Each "woe" is identified with a trumpet, so "woe, woe, woe," would apply to the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh trumpet sounds; therefore, this is describing judgment day. The day of judgment, as God is using this parabolic language, and we also read of a *star* that falls "from the heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit."
What is this *star*? The star is the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember, He is the only one (we saw in Isaiah 22 and in Revelation 3:7 and in Revelation 20) that possesses the *key*. Satan does not have the *key* to the pit, or he would have loosed himself when he was bound there. No, only the Lord Jesus has the *key*, and the Lord Jesus is described or pictured as a star in other places: He is called the "Morning Star," for instance, or , it speaks of a star that comes out of Jacob in Numbers 24:17, and these are types and figures of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the "star of Jacob," and He is the *star* that falls from heaven to the earth, in this figure that God is giving us, and who has the *key*. It says it was "given to Him," and some try to say that this means Christ had the key and now He has given it to someone else. No. It is the Father who gave Christ the *key* and we read that back in Isaiah 22:22:
And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.
So, within the Godhead, the Father lays upon His shoulder (in that picture of Eliakim who represents Christ), the "key of the house of David." And Revelation 3 tells us that the one who has they key is holy and true; it is none other than Jesus. That is why it says, "to him was given the key," because it was given to Him by the Father, and He has it in possession as a gift within the Godhead.
Christ opened the "bottomless pit," and this took place on the day of judgment, and we know from many tie-ins in the Bible that this took place on May 21, 2011. On that particular date, on the day of judgment, it was as though the "bottomless pit" was opened, and smoke came out of the pit as a smoke of a great furnace, because the Bible likens judgment day to a day of God's fiery wrath, and God's anger burns against sinners. So it is the wrath of God coming upon the earth.
Now notice here in Revelation 9 that no one is cast into the bottomless pit, but that which was in the pit is coming out: the wrath and fury of God is coming out, and the smoke is escaping from the pit, and that smoke darkens the sun and the air, and that is indicating that the light of the Gospel goes out once the Lord opens up the bottomless pit. In a sense, God has brought *hell* to earth. He has the "keys of hell and of death," and He has opened the pit so that the condition that was in the pit---the smoke as of a furnace---is now upon the earth. That means that God's judgment is on the world; the world now lies under the wrath of God, and is found in the condition of being in hell and death.
Since May 21, 2011, the Bible indicates that the condition of hell (and remember, hell is not a place; when Satan and the fallen angels were cast down to hell, as 2<sup>nd/sup> Peter 2 says, they were not thrown into a place---they were still on the earth) is language that God uses to describe a spiritual condition. It says in 2Peter 2:4:
For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
The Lord, in darkening the sun and putting out the light of the moon, and in having the stars fall from the sky, is using language that really is saying the same thing---that the light of the Gospel has gone out and been removed, and the light of the candlestick is also out. God is telling us the same truth in many different ways.
But the Lord, in doing this spiritually, and removing that Gospel light---the only light that can lighten the darkness of a sinner's heart and save him---He has cast the world down into darkness. Darkness has taken over the earth. Now, it could be said, mankind is being held in "chains of darkness," awaiting the final day of this period of judgment day(which could come after 1,600 days), and on that very last day, God will destroy the world. Mankind will have been kept in darkness in the condition of *hell* until that final day comes, and the Lord then destroys unsaved man, the fallen angels, and the whole corrupt creation.
So, it is really a horrible, horrible time that we happen to be living in. Of course, if we are a child of God, we can thank God that even though we are in a world of darkness, God is still a light unto us, and remember the beautiful verse that the Lord gives us in Micah 7:8:
Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, JEHOVAH shall be a light unto me.
So the believer still has *light* in their dwelling, that is, the Holy Spirit still indwells each child of God. But, outwardly, in the world there is just intense spiritual darkness. There is no light, and it is a tragic situation, and God describes this period of time in Revelation 6, where it talks of the four horsemen, and it says in Revelation 6:7-8:
And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
This is the spiritual condition that the world is now in.