In the book of Revelation we read about the conclusion of the whole conflict of the ages. Don’t you love to read about how it is all going to turn out? It is important for us to see what God says in His Word will be the conclusion of this great conflict that has gone on down through all the ages. The passage we are most concerned about is Revelation 20:7–10. But we will start reading in chapter 19, verse 11, to get the background, because you cannot understand Revelation 20:7–10 unless you see it in the context of the events that take place.
And I saw heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True; and in righteousness He judges and wages war. And His eyes are a flame of fire, and upon His head are many diadems; and He has a name written upon Him which no one knows except Himself. And He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood; and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. And from His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may smite the nations; and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”
And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried out with a loud voice, saying to all the birds which fly in midheaven, “Come, assemble for the great supper of God (remember that the marriage supper of the Lamb has taken place, as recorded in verses 7–9; now this is the great supper of God); in order that you may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of commanders and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them and the flesh of all men, both free men and slaves, and small and great.”
And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies, assembled to make war against Him who sat upon the horse, and against His army. And the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet who performed the signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image; these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone. And the rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat upon the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.
And I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he should not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time. At that point, Satan must be released for a short time. Now we are getting closer to the main thought of this message. And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. These came to life. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years.
Now here is the main passage that we are interested in: And when the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, and will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore. We saw how the false prophet deceived the nations. Now Satan is released in order that he might deceive the nations again. And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them. Note that: they are completely devoured. And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Revelation 19:11–20:10.
This passage started my heart asking the Lord the question: Why would Satan be imprisoned for a thousand years, and the beast and the false prophet be thrown directly into the lake of fire? Why will he be spared until entire nations of peoples have again risen up? These people will not be immortal, but I imagine that they will be people of great extended longevity. The Old Testament prophecies speaking about the Kingdom indicate that if someone dies at the age of one hundred years it will be considered an untimely death, as we would consider the death of a premature baby; and a man’s years shall be like the years of a tree.
“No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days; for the youth will die at the age of one hundred and the one who does not reach the age of one hundred shall be thought accursed. And they shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall also plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build, and another inhabit, they shall not plant, and another eat; for as the lifetime of a tree, so shall be the days of My people, and My chosen ones shall wear out the work of their hands.” Isaiah 65:20–22.
So we understand that people will be born, they will live and bear children, and apparently they will die; for longevity does not mean eternal life, but only that people will live a long time.
During this period, apparently the earth will be filled with people. If you consider a thousand years without war and sickness, you realize that people will have quite a long, extended life span. The bearing period of a woman’s life now is normally about thirty-five years. But if, when people are revitalized, then instead of thirty-five years, suppose it were to be increased ten times, to 350 years? Even at that age, a woman would still be rather young. That could certainly mean a lot of babies!
During these thousand years, the saints will be ruling; and of course, they will have entered into life.
And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years. Revelation 20:4–6.
During this period there apparently will be two kinds of life in the earth: natural and spiritual. There will be life that is natural, but without any impulse such as we have now to bring it to the conclusions of the carnal nature. None of the forces will be working to bring the flesh into destruction, as they are now. Everything will be working in the other direction. The spiritual gravity will be reversed, and everything will tend to bring people into their best—their best behavior, their best accomplishments. Nevertheless, they will be a natural people.
During this time, there also will be the spiritual people who have entered into the first resurrection. They will have been changed (I Corinthians 15:51–52; I Thessalonians 4:15–17), and they will be ruling and reigning with Christ (Revelation 20:6). Of course, with them there is no death; because if the Word says that they rule and reign a thousand years, and if this is literally a period of a thousand years, then they get a full thousand years, according to the Word. So we know that these ones live a thousand years to rule and to reign. At the end of the thousand years, literal or symbolic, there will be no necessity to test them; but apparently God finds it necessary to use the devil again.
The devil will come out of his prison and go to work upon all of the nations. As he does, he will succeed in deceiving such a great many of them that when they gather together, the number of them will be like the sand of the seashore. And when they come up against the city of God, that is all God wanted to know—the deception will have run its course, and fire will come down and devour the whole bunch of them.
Are you thinking, “I can’t understand that”? Then read this carefully, because there is a reason why God will allow it to happen. There is a reason why Satan is now being allowed to be the great archdeceiver in the last days, and why the multiplication of those who deceive and are being deceived is increasing in the earth (II Timothy 3:13). We will read another passage of Scripture concerning deception in II Thessalonians 2, but it will never have any meaning to you if you do not understand this principle.
Deception serves a great purpose in God: It brings to a conclusion the course of the heart.
In the case of all these people who live during this thousand-year period, and their children who are born during that time, they all have a heart—but what is in the heart? God wants to know. So deception will come, because it is the easiest way to bring the final test to an individual and to determine whether he will walk with God or he will not walk with God. Will he serve God or not? And the multitude of these people who can be deceived will be like the sand of the seashore.
If you can be deceived, it is because you do not have the love of the truth (II Thessalonians 2:10–11). Deception is going to come where unbelief really is present in the heart.
It may be only a little seed of unbelief, but when deception comes it will trigger a person into a decisive action. I used to wonder why churches would go along well, with promises and blessings; then suddenly God would allow something to come against them, and lies or deception would run through the church. When it was finished, maybe a third or even half of the people were gone. There are many churches where this has never happened; usually the deception comes to an individual. He will be sitting there while the Word is coming, and he is hearing it, but it is coming through to him scrambled; it is something else entirely than the Word of God to his heart. He does not know what he is listening to, and everything that he perceives is under that deception. It is then that you find out what he is made of. The testing of that deception reveals what God has really created in him, or what God has not created in him. The deception brings it to the test.
When you come into this walk, it is not difficult for you to hear the Living Word and to rejoice in it. But the difficult moment comes when the Lord allows you to be tested. Invariably, the final acid test comes when a spirit of deception comes to you and changes the appearance of everything, creating false illusions. Then you are either going to continue to believe the Word that God revealed to you or you are going to reject the Word that God revealed to you. That is the only issue. You are going to accept that Word God gave or you are going to reject that Word. Determine that you are going to stand on that Word and say, “God said it, and I don’t care what anyone else says or what anyone else does; I believe it because God revealed it to me.” It is that rock of revelation upon which the Church is built that the gates of hell cannot prevail against (Matthew 16:15–19). But if you have anything less than that, the gates of hell can possibly prevail against you because deception will bring out your unbelief.
Deception will also test your faith in the Word to such an extent that you will no longer be able to remain lukewarm or in a condition of indifference (Revelation 3:15–16). You will be forced to become completely obedient and dedicated to the Word that you have believed, or else you will be shaken out of that Word. Therefore, do you realize that the issue is not your passive acceptance of a Word?
“Oh, I believe that Word. I would never say anything against the Living Word that comes. I know it is of God.” Fine. Then a spirit of deception could come along in the will of God to shake you, and then what are you going to do? When that happens, you will either get on the front lines or you will head for the door. It will be one of the two. God has a way of using this to test us. Deception is coming; and when a spirit of deception hits, the whole earth will be shaken.
I do not know of anything that is more indifferent in this present world system than that religious tolerance which is settling over everyone. It is that thing which says, “Live and let live. All roads lead to the same place.” But watch what happens when the deception begins to come. Watch all of these beautiful people who have such wonderful, different religions, who all “dwell together in peace”—watch them turn on the remnant as though they would destroy them. Watch them turn on the sons of God so vehemently that they would like to do God a favor and wipe out the remnant (John 16:2). Their tolerance will suddenly disappear. Why? Because the spirit of deception will come upon the lukewarm, the half-hearted, and they will be shaken out of that passive place into some decisive action that reveals the course of their heart, possibly for the first time in their life. Then they will do and say things that they will marvel at themselves; but it is the spirit of deception that has triggered them into the final course of their heart. This is a Word that you have to hear.
After the thousand years are ended, the earth will be full of these people who are untried. Something has to determine what will happen with these people: Will they go on from the human plane into eternal life? Of course, following this period is God’s great white-throne judgment (Revelation 20:11–15). This is the time when everyone who has ever lived upon the face of the earth must come to the final judgment. What is going to be done with all of these people who have never been tested? So God decides, “I will test them. I will let Satan loose on them for just a little season and see what they do.” And they will come in number like the sand of the seashore, ready to destroy the people of God who have been the ones to guide them and direct them into the greatest age that the world has ever known.
Now that we understand this principle, let’s see if the same thing isn’t taking place right now. Do you find yourself saying, “O God, deliver me from deception!” In II Thessalonians chapter 2 we see a course by which you can escape deception, at least the terrible results of it. We will start in verse 8 to get the background, but the passage we are interested in is verses 10–13. This passage is talking about the end-time events that we have just described and we are experiencing now.
And then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming (the margin reads, His “presence,” or “Parousia”); that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish (you see, the false signs and the lies are there; why does this deception reach these ones?), because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. II Thessalonians 2:8–10. It was not that they did not assent to the truth, but they did not receive it to love it and to walk in it.
I wonder how many pastors and ministers over the years have confessed, “Yes, I know this is the Word of God; I know it is the truth,” only to back away from it. Why? Because they did not have the love of the truth that would prompt the decisive action upon what they knew was the truth. For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence (verse 11). Now we are back to deception. Does deception play a role in the hand of God? Yes, it does. There are people who have all the truth! But they have no love for the truth, and so the Lord has to send upon them a deluding influence so that they might believe what is false.
You will either believe the truth that you receive and act on it, or you will have an opportunity to believe a lie and be prompted to act on that. It is a dangerous thing to hear the truth without acting on it.
And for this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they might believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness. But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. Verses 11–13.
There it is—faith in the truth. Faith in the truth. In that one statement this whole Word explodes and comes alive.
Do you realize what God has done for you? He brought you into a walk with Himself, and it became the most real thing in the world to you because it was revelation to you. There is no reality like revelation. What you reason out with your mind or what you arrive at by your feelings does not have the reality that revelation has. Once the revelation of the Word comes to your heart, if you love it and you act upon it, you are safe. But somewhere along the line, that deceiving spirit will come at you if there is any halfheartedness or any reservation in your following after the Lord, and that will test you to see if you really love the truth. Then you will react, but not necessarily on revelation. This time deception comes, and you may reject the truth because you can reason against it, or because your emotions are stirred to such a point that you take some action against it. It will come usually through reason or through emotion. The enemy brings the reasons and he brings the lies. And either through the mental process of reasoning things out, or through the soulish response to circumstances, reactions, or pressures, you will be brought to a decision.
God is going to do that with the nations at the end of the thousand years. God is going to do it with you sometime within your life; and you can count on it, you will not have to wait a thousand years for it to happen. Perhaps you find that already God has spoken to your heart, and already the deceiving spirit has come to test that Word to your heart. You may have already been shaken, and you have had to come to the place where you say, “God gave me a Word, and nothing else is going to shake me from it!”
Notice that this deception does not come only at the initiative of Satan. The Scripture says, “God will send upon them a deluding influence,” so that they must face the test to see if they are going to completely accept and believe the Word of God that came to them by revelation, or if they will reject it.
Is there an answer for this? Yes, and the answer is very simple. When God gives you a Word and your heart burns with it, believe that Word. Believe it steadfastly, and hang onto it. If you are tested by the devil, or by what seem to be good reasons to reject the Word, or if you are tested by emotions that seem to stir you against the Word, reject them. Reject them, and hang onto the Word.
The greatest way to shake off a deceiving spirit is to rise a little bit higher—higher to the throne of God—and stand there worshiping the Lord. For the reality of revelation is maintained by worship. The reality of revelation is maintained by worship. You continually find that every Word God has spoken to you is renewed—it is shining and bright, it glows with the glory of God, it is written on the tablets of your heart and you rejoice in it greatly—as you stand in His presence and you worship the Lord. But when you walk afar off, as Peter did, it is easy to forget that He told you that you were going to deny Him before the cock crows. When you walk afar off, it is easy to warm your hands at a fire on a cold morning while the Master is being tried (Luke 22:34, 54–62).
It is easy to be uninvolved when you are following afar off. But when you are pressing into His presence, the Word is real to you. The reality of the Word and the reality of revelation are maintained beautifully by those who are dedicated constantly to the worship of the Lord.
The Lord bless His Word to your heart.
Deception can serve a great purpose in God: it brings to a conclusion course of the heart.
The love of the truth is immunity to deception.
Unbelief opens the door to deception.
Believe the truth and act on it, or you will have an opportunity to believe a lie.
It is dangerous to hear the truth and not act on it.
Press into His presence and His Word will be real to you; follow afar off and denial comes easily.