Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #8 of Revelation chapter 20 and we are going to read Revelation 20:7-8:
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
Again, when it says in verse 7, “And when the thousand years are expired,” this “thousand year” period points to the completion of Satan’s binding which took place over the course of the church age from 33AD to 1988AD. Then God says, “Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,” and that was the point back in 1988, the 13,000th year of earth’s history.
In verse 8, God tells us something interesting about the loosing of Satan. Again, it says in Revelation 8:
And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth…
Of course, the “four quarters” would represent the North, South, East and West and the number “four” represents to the furthest extent of whatever is in view or “universality,” so Satan would be loosed and his loosing will have an impact all over the world in the “four quarters of the earth.” Satan would be able to, once again, deceive the nations. I say, “Once again,” because if we go back to verse 3, it says in Revelation 20:3:
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.
In this verse in which the Lord describes Satan’s binding (which took place at the cross), God says that once Satan was bound he would not be able to deceive the nations any longer. That would continue to be true until he was loosed and that is where verse 8 comes into play: “And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth.” From these two verses, we can gather that before Satan was bound at the cross, which would encompass the time from man’s fall in the Garden of Eden throughout the 11,000-year history of the earth, Satan had been able to deceive the nations. That is why in the time before the cross the earth was mostly in deception. It was only the nation of Israel that possessed the Oracles of God; they had the Word of God in their possession.
The rest of the nations of the world did not have the Word of God in their possession, although it is true that God would occasionally save an individual from another nation. He saved Rahab the harlot from Jericho and Ruth from Moab and Naaman from Syria. So, yes, God would save an individual here or there, but it was only when they came in contact with His people Israel. For example, Rahab came into contact with the Israelites when Joshua and the people took Jericho as the Lord caused the wall to miraculously fall down. Ruth the Moabitess was married to one of the sons of Naomi and Naaman the Syrian came to Israel to see the prophet and be healed of his leprosy. But, for the most part, the nations of the world did not have access to the Word of God. This was especially true of the nations on the other side of the world or the other side of the ocean. The prophets of God or the true believers of God would not have been able to reach them and they would have remained in darkness and deception, like China and India (for the most part) and all the nations of the world and they would have remained that way for thousands of years on the Old Testament side of the cross. In their deception they would have worshipped idols and they would have carved images and developed other religions. That is what we saw in the Bible when God would cause Israel to battle some of these other nations that had false gods and idol worship and this was due to Satan’s deception.
Then came the time when the Lord Jesus Christ entered into the world and then went to the cross. Satan was bound at the cross and as it says in Revelation 20:3: “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.” But, for almost 1,955 years (which the “thousand years” represented), Satan was bound and the nations could not be deceived in the great manner they had been deceived in the past.
Let us just look at a couple of examples of what God means when He says the nations will not be deceived. For example, the Bible speaks of the Word of God coming to Ephesus, which would have been a Gentile land that for centuries would have been in darkness and deception, but after the cross the Apostle Paul and others brought the Gospel into Asia-Minor and the Gentiles. Let us read about that in Acts 19:17-20:
And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their deeds. Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.
The Gospel came to them as a light that shone in the darkness and now Satan was not able to keep men in such darkness as he had previously done, because it was God’s program to establish His Word to show the nations their foolishness insofar as their idolatry, imagery, “curious arts” and superstitions. The Bible really shows all these things to be worthless and vain and as the prophets God raised up would declare the truth, many people realized they were not to bow down to images, but to worship the true God in spirit and in truth. Over time the eyes and understanding of the elect were opened, but also the eyes of some of the non-elect that would come into the churches would be granted at least some understanding of certain truths concerning God and how He is to be worshipped.
Then it says in Acts 19:23-28:
And the same time there arose no small stir about that way. For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen; Whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands: So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth. And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.
Diana was an idol and we can see in this passage some of the things that were happening in the 1st century AD, not long after Christ had gone to the cross and Satan had been bound. For this kind of thing to have happened in the Old Testament days was almost unheard of and now this Word of God was not only going to Ephesus but all of Asia. Of course, Asia was a huge land with a great number of people, even back then. They were learning that there is no true God that can be made by the hands of men and these silversmiths and craftsmen had their occupation in the industry of making false gods and they were troubled. Actually, there is a similarity between this and the “industry” of the corporate church. When God opened up the Scriptures at the time of the end and declared the church age was over, they, too, were troubled. Their “craft” was in danger.
Anyway, we can see that the deceitful workings of Satan during the Old Testament days was primarily related to false gods and other religions that went unchallenged; the truth was only in Israel; the Oracles of God were with the prophets of Israel. Every now and then an individual would become saved from another nation, but the nation itself was left in its darkened state, but not after the cross. Now there was a new program of the evangelization of the earth and the people of God were not content to stay in Israel because Christ had commanded them to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creatures, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It was God’s program to bring the Gospel to all the world and wherever the Gospel went, there was “light” and civilization. The barbarian and pagan religions and the idol worship were put away.
As we saw in Acts, chapter 19, they burned their books of “curious art” and they would have burned their idols and put the craftsmen out of work, so Satan was not able to continue the deceit to such a large extent during the church age. The evangelization of the world continued, with missionaries eventually going into South America and they visited tribes deep within the forests. They visited cannibals and they visited others that had their idols and false gods. When the Gospel came, it basically “cleaned them up” and they got rid of these things and that served to remove some of the deceitful workings of Satan in the Old Testament.
But, God says something that is really very frightening and troubling, once we understand how Satan had such free reign in all the nations in the Old Testament. That changed for almost 2,000 years, specifically for 1,955 years. Then God says that once Satan is loosed, he will “go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth.” So the nations that were once deceived, but then enlightened, will be deceived once again. Let us turn to Matthew 24, a chapter that deals with Great Tribulation and the end of the world. And when did the Great Tribulation happen? It was at the end of the church age when Satan was loosed. It says in Matthew 24:11-13:
And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
Then it says in Matthew 24:21-24:
For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
God begins speaking of the Great Tribulation and, suddenly, here it is again – false prophets, false Christs and terrible deception that would deceive even the elect if that were possible. By God’s grace, it is not possible to deceive the elect because they hear the Shepherd’s voice and will not follow the voice of another, but for the rest of the world there will be great deception again because the vehicle that God used to bring the nations out of the darkness was the formation of the New Testament churches and congregations in all the nations – in Ephesus, in South America, in Europe, in Africa, and so on. The Word of God transformed the world from its pagan religions and its barbarism, but then the corporate church was turned over to Satan once he was loosed and now they became the tool of Satan to deceive the nations once again. The churches and congregations of the world became the places where Satan could actively raise up false Christ and false gospels to bring mankind back into the darkness.
Revelation, chapter 13 is a chapter in which God speaks of the “beast” that rises up out of the sea and it is another way of saying that Satan has been loosed and, therefore, Revelation 13 is describing events that happen after the church age is over and judgment began at the house of God during the Great Tribulation. We read in Revelation 13:12:
And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
When Satan was bound at the cross it was as though he received a death blow from Christ, but now he was loosed and his “deadly wound was healed.”
Then it says in Revelation 13:13-14:
And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
Again, the beast has an image made to him, which is the corporate church and he is deceiving them that dwell on the earth. Once again, in the four quarters of the earth, Satan was active and he was working mightily to deceive mankind. The nations of the world came under his power and authority for the little season of the Great Tribulation. And what began to happen with the people of the world, the people that had burned their books of “curious arts” and turned from their idols? What happened to the ones in tribes that had bones in their noses and big rings in their ears, but had been transformed from those things through the Gospel? We find a world that is going “back” to its pagan roots. We find a world that is caught up in tattooing and piercing themselves and they are even starting to look like they are back in the tribes that their ancestors had been a part of before the Gospel brought them out. We find the music “beat” has degenerated and has turned into something that is not much above a primitive drum beat that was in the tribal religions and customs. The world is going back to its barbarism that the Gospel had brought them out from and there is a return to darkness and a time of deception.
When we get together in our next study, we will look at the next part of verse 8 regarding “Gog and Magog.” They are mentioned here and they are mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel and we will take a look at what God has in view by this interesting reference to “Gog and Magog.”