Many of the debates about how to interpret Revelation 20 have obscured its most important message. From his new teaching series Blessed Hope, W. Robert Godfrey explores the encouraging implications of Christ’s triumph over the evil one.
Transcript:
"And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever." The end of the dragon. The end of the dragon. He was strong and he was weak, but the final word: he is destroyed. He is condemned. That's the judgment here, the final judgment that we see. So, this is a powerful picture, isn't it? It's a powerful representation that the Lord is in charge of history, that even when we're weak, we're strong. Even when time seems short, we have time. When time seems to drag on long forever, it won't be so long. The Lord's in charge. And the paradoxes help us think through the strangeness of our life before the glory is revealed. And so, this is really, in a variety of ways, I think, wonderfully encouraging to us. It's not that I really want to fight with other interpretations of Revelation 20. It's just that I fear we've missed the blessing too often by raising weird questions that don't really apply and missing the real point that's being made: that we reign with Christ now, and we have plenty of time to do our work, and the devil has hardly any time at all to do his. We're going to win. That's what Dennis Johnson said once, "What's the book of the Revelation all about? Jesus wins!" And we see that really wonderfully here.
