Revelation Chapter 20 Verse 4

4 Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life, and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

Does verse 4 describe a future situation or a past situation? For a clue, let’s look at who is assembled here. We have seen this same cast of characters before — the martyrs and the beast. If we are correct that this beast is Rome, then this chapter is still talking about Rome.

And isn’t that what we would expect? This entire book has been building toward the climax in these final three chapters. Do we really expect God to suddenly change the subject now that he has reached the grand conclusion?

Who are on the thrones in verse 4? It can be none other that the church. Jesus promised in Chapters 2 and 3 that those who overcame would share his rule over the nations. That is what we see here.

In addition to seeing the church as a whole, John also sees those individual Christians who were killed by Rome. He sees the martyrs who were killed because they had not worshipped the beast.

Had these Christians been defeated? Hardly! Revelation rings throughout with the message that death is not a defeat for a Christian. Defeat would have occurred had a Christian renounced Jesus in order to live. Remember Matthew 16:25 — “For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” The only defeated Christians were those who compromised with Rome.

What happens to these martyrs? They live and reign with Christ for 1000 years. The Revised Standard Version more accurately reads “they came to life” and reigned with Christ 1000 years. They are like the two witnesses we saw earlier. They appeared to have been killed and defeated by Rome, but they came to life. All was not as it seemed!

Is this resurrection literal or figurative? Our general rule with apocalyptic language is to understand language figuratively unless something forces us to understand it literally, and there is no reason to depart from that rule here. In fact, the Bible includes many figurative resurrections. Daniel 12:2, for example, is a figurative resurrection depicting the coming of the Messiah, and that same figurative resurrection is mentioned in Luke 2:34 by Simeon. Isaiah 26:19 and Hosea 13:14 are other examples.

What does this particular resurrection scene in verse 4 depict? It depicts the same thing in a new setting that was depicted in Ezekiel 37 where the same image was also used. In Ezekiel 37, Ezekiel saw a bodily resurrection occur in the valley of dry bones. In verse 11, God told him that the bones were “the house of Israel” who had lost all of their hope. The resurrection of those bones was used to depict the restoration of their hope. Read verses 12-14 —

Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD.

Does such an interpretation fit the context of this passage? Yes, perfectly. These martyrs are figuratively raised to life to depict the restoration of hope that the church was experiencing. In Ezekiel the symbol was used to depict a national restoration of God’s people from Babylonian captivity. Here the symbol is used to depict the restoration of God’s people from Roman captivity.

What happens after they come to life? They reign with Christ for 1000 years. What does that mean? We know what that means! It means that their restoration is completely complete! Their victory over Rome is just as complete as was Satan’s defeat with regard to Rome. Those two events are two sides of the same coin. If one is 1000 years, then so must be the other.

And note that they reign with Christ for 1000 years. You often hear people talk about the 1000 year reign of Christ, but where is that mentioned anywhere in these verses? The 1000 year period denotes the reign of the martyrs with Christ. There is no time limit given here (figuratively or otherwise) on the duration of Christ’s reign.

Finally, we should recall our earlier comments about those who build elaborate religious theories based on a single verse or perhaps a few verses from Revelation. Isn’t it odd that such an important theory (in their own mind) is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible? Barnes explains the situation well in his commentary on Revelation —

It is admitted, on all hands, that this doctrine [of premillennialism], if contained in the Scriptures at all, is found in this one passage only. It is not pretended that there is, in any other place, a direct affirmation that this will literally occur, nor would the advocates for that opinion undertake to show that it is fairly implied in any other part of the Bible. But it is strange, not to say improbable, that the doctrine of the literal resurrection of, the righteous, a thousand years before the wicked, should be announced in one passage only.

If premillennialism were true then wouldn’t one have expected Paul to say something about it somewhere in his many letters? Instead, what Paul tells us is very different from premillennialism.

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