Prophetic Interpretation Page 16: A Revelation Interpretation Page 6: The Double Climax

Now notice how there is a double climax to this story.  First, the invasion comes to an end.  The True King defeats the Anti-Christ and False Prophet, and they are cast into the Lake of Fire for all eternity.  This is a final prison-house of torment and pain that no criminal shall ever escape from.  This place was created to protect the true citizens of Christ’s Kingdom so that no evil villain, rebel, rapist, thief or murderer could touch them.  No, King Jesus would throw these evil people into a prison they should never escape from for the safety of His Own people.

But then, after the invasion has ended, notice in Chapter 20, Satan is captured by one of God’s angels.  He is cast into Hell for 1,000 years.  Hell, a bottomless pit of torment, is only a temporary prison.  It is not the eternal prison called the Lake of Fire.  So Satan is locked up on death-row, so to speak, awaiting his final judgment.

There is 1,000 years where Jesus reigns over the Earth with Satan locked up.  This may not make sense as much to us, but you see this part of the story would probably resonate very well to the Christians of the Roman Empire in those days.  While the Anti-Christ and False Prophet are a usurping king and his captain, Satan is the usurping emperor of the world.  He is the force behind the other two.  He is the evil emperor who directs and orders the Anti-Christ and False Prophet.  He is the ruthless tyrant behind the other tyrants.  He is the Caesar of the world, so to speak.

Just as Jesus defeated the Anti-Christ and False Prophet in the physical, so Satan, the true force behind these two villains, must be defeated by God the Father in the spiritual.  And so, after 1,000 years, Satan, the usurping emperor, will be released.  Just as Jesus invaded the Earth to claim it for Himself and His people, so now Satan would return to the world to try to invade it and claim it for himself.  In Chapter 20:7-10 it tells how Satan would actually succeed once more in deceiving the nations to gather them together against Jesus.  He, himself, would go out and deceive and gather.  He would not send someone else.  He would do it.  He would challenge the true Emperor of the Universe (God the Father) directly.  This was no longer Satan sending a wicked man to challenge a righteous man, Jesus.  This was Satan himself challenging Almighty God.  It was Emperor against emperor.

And so, as Satan besieges Jesus and those who follow Him, God Himself joins the fight.  In the first battle to claim the Earth, Christ fought the Anti-Christ and the False Prophet and destroyed them by the power of His shed blood and the Word.  He conquered the Earth and took it for Himself as a mighty king would take a city.  Now, the great evil usurping emperor was drawing new troops to try to take what Jesus had claimed by His own right.  Now Father God, the True Emperor of all things, the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent God, steps in and obliterates the usurping emperor and all who would follow him.  God Himself defeats the great spiritual enemy of all creation.  God Himself calls fire down from heaven and saves the day.  Then the usurping emperor, Satan, is cast into the Lake of Fire to join his minions in eternal suffering forever so that no citizen of God’s would ever have to suffer at his hand again.