Question: Would you agree that [the nations in Rev. 20 who will come against the saints and Christ in Jerusalem] are the same raptured and martyred saints that will reign with Christ for 1,000 years? | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff

Question: Revelation:20:9 says that Satan will be loosed and will deceive many nations who will then come against the saints and Christ in Jerusalem.  Would you agree that these are the same raptured and martyred saints that will reign with Christ for 1,000 years?

Answer: Yes. Those who have come to faith in Christ before the Great Tribulation have been raptured and are in heaven during that time of God’s wrath  upon earth. Multitudes will come to faith in Christ during the Great Tribulation and will be martyred for their faith (Rv 6:9-11). They will be resurrected at the end of that seven-year period (Rv 20:4), but not raptured, because Christ has returned to earth to reign on David’s throne. Both those who were raptured and returned with Christ at His Second Coming in their resurrected and glorified bodies, and the Tribulation martyrs who are resurrected at the Second Coming, will rule and reign with Christ for 1,000 years. They are the “saints” who, together with Christ, are the objects of the attack upon Jerusalem.

Incredibly, millions (“the number of whom is as the sand of the sea” – Rv 20:8) remain rebels, and they are the ones who attack Jerusalem when Satan is loosed.  Thus the Millennium will be the final proof of the incorrigible evil in the human heart.  In spite of the fact that Satan is locked up for 1,000 years so that he cannot influence those on earth, and that no evil can be practiced anywhere, and in spite of the fact that Christ is present on David’s throne in His resurrected and glorified body revealing the fullness of His power as God, and in spite of the fact that the saints are ruling along with Him in their glorified and resurrected bodies—yet when Satan is loosed, the world follows him again just as Adam and Eve did in the beginning.

Those attacking Jerusalem are not after the new converts all over the earth, but direct their hatred at Christ and His throne and the glorified saints ruling with Him from Jerusalem.