The End of Evil - "The 3 Stages"
Last week we looked at the Millennium, what it is and why it is important to us as Christians. If you missed that study, worry not, you can find it right here.
Now today we will be looking at what happens after the millennium. We will be looking at the end of evil.
1. Gog and Magog
After the thousand years has passed, Christ will then return to earth again, however, this time He will not only be accompanied by just the angels, but a whole host of the redeemed. As Christ descends towards the earth He will bid the wicked dead to rise from their graves to then receive their final reward. Revelation 20:7-8 gives us more information on what transpired also at this point.
““And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.””
Before we go any further, verse 8 makes reference to Gog and Magog. What is this?
We can actually turn to a few scriptures to uncover the mysteries surrounding Gog and Magog. We start by looking at 1 Chronicles 5:3-6 which reads:
“The sons, I say, of Reuben the firstborn of Israel were, Hanoch, and Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi.The sons of Joel; Shemaiah his son, Gog his son, Shimei his son, Micah his son, Reaia his son, Baal his son, Beerah his son, whom Tilgathpilneser king of Assyria carried away captive: he was prince of the Reubenites.”
The first establishment of posterity is that Gog, was the son of Joel, who was a descendant from the tribe of Reuben. Reuben as we know was the firstborn son of Israel who lost his inheritance because of the sin of lying with his father’s concubine. His tribe was therefore cursed and reduced to the lowest significance of the 12 tribes. Reuben is therefore referred to as selfish and rebellious as even Jacob defined his son’s attributes in Genesis 49:4 as “unstable as water”. It is also worth noting that Korah was accompanied by two Reubenites who were the main instigators of rebellion against Moses and God’s established order. Now there is extensive passage on Gog throughout Ezekiel chapters 38-39, but verse 1 of chapter 38 reads:
“And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal: And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords: Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:”
From here we see that Gog the chief prince of the tribes of Meshech and Tubal hailing from the land of Magog, which have come to invade Israel with a great army and destroy its cities. In these chapters, God is prophesying against him and states that although his army is mighty, God demonstrates His greatness and holiness by destroying his forces and protecting His people.
So to tie things together, Gog is the chief prince from the land of Magog, and he represents defiance against God and His established Kingdom.
2. Avengers: Endgame
In the Great Controversy chapter 42, Sis. White states:
“Every eye in that vast multitude is turned to behold the glory of the Son of God. With one voice the wicked hosts exclaim: “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!” It is not love to Jesus that inspires this utterance. The force of truth urges the words from unwilling lips. As the wicked went into their graves, so they come forth with the same enmity to Christ and the same spirit of rebellion. They are to have no new probation in which to remedy the defects of their past lives. Nothing would be gained by this. A lifetime of transgression has not softened their hearts. A second probation, were it given them, would be occupied as was the first in evading the requirements of God and exciting rebellion against Him.”
From our previous study, we noted that before the second coming of Christ, the wicked and the righteous would have been judged prior to Christ’s arrival, therefore the thousand years would have been spent by the righteous looking through the books and reviewing the accounts of the quality of the lives lived on earth. This reviewing period is not the salvivic judgment per say, but rather a confirmation on the part of the saints that what God had judged was just and righteous. Sis. White gives credence to this fact by stating in her book that giving these wicked individuals a new probation would have done nothing for their character or change their decision to serve God. Therefore, their punishment is just.
We continue with Revelation 20:9;
“And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”
Now the devil was locked up for a thousand years, no one to tempt, no one to torture, just a lone being in the vast emptiness that became of the world. Imagine his elation when he starts seeing the dead people that he has been familiar with start raising up. It is so much that he gathers them up for one final assault on God’s Kingdom.
“He will marshal all the armies of the lost under his banner and through them endeavor to execute his plans. The wicked are Satan’s captives. In rejecting Christ they have accepted the rule of the rebel leader. They are ready to receive his suggestions and to do his bidding. “Yet, true to his early cunning, he does not acknowledge himself to be Satan. He claims to be the prince who is the rightful owner of the world and whose inheritance has been unlawfully wrested from him. He represents himself to his deluded subjects as a redeemer, assuring them that his power has brought them forth from their graves and that he is about to rescue them from the most cruel tyranny.”
It is interesting to note that, if there is one thing superhero movies are good at, it is giving visual context to Revelation 20. I’ve always questioned, how it is that after actually knowing who God is at the end of time, how and why would the wicked truly try to take a city that has descended from heaven with angels, God and the righteous? How can they be so deceived? You could use the Bible to answer this, but let’s use hollywood instead. Think of every major blockbuster film ever created, including those massive box office superhero movie flicks. If you put them together, they always have a common enemy. That common enemy’s sole purpose is to take control of the earth (because of course, of the thousands of galaxies that actually exists, with the comparable amount of planets also, earth, of all them, brings the most clout, seemingly). Not only that, this enemy is from another world, another galaxy, and the only way to enter the earth is to descend upon it, you know, the same way Jerusalem descends upon the earth. There is always a leader, or a mighty group that leads the charge in unifying the nations of earth to rebel against this ‘threat’ for the ‘common’ good. Does this sound familiar? We just read it in the passage above.
The mainstream media of today are slowly but surely trying to condition our minds to attack the City of God and make it seem normal, because, of course, you’ve heard extensively about aliens over the course of your life, but as shocked as you may be to actually see one, subconsciously you would have been conditioned to not think it surprising or farfetched that one actually exists. In fact, seeing it may then just make you believe everything else that seemed as fiction before, therefore rationlizing things or actions that you would have thought previously to be ‘stupid’. So the final attempt on Jerusalem will not be as hard a task for the devil as you may think, not just because it was prophesied, but, because his work to make it happen has already started.
3. God Triumphant
But fear not! God will surely not be mocked, in Zechariah 14 the prophet says;
“The Lord my God [663] shall come, and all the saints with Thee. And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof, ... and there shall be a very great valley.” “And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and His name one.”
Sis. White continues this thought in The Great Controversy;
“As the New Jerusalem, in its dazzling splendor, comes down out of heaven, it rests upon the place purified and made ready to receive it, and Christ, with His people and the angels, enters the Holy City.”
We now finish Revelation 20 from verse 10;
“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”
This fire will totally consume the wicked, for “this is the second death” (verse 14, KJV). A merciful God will not allow the wicked to suffer eternal torture. That would only perpetuate sin. No, the wicked will be reduced to ashes (Malachi 4:1–3). This is pretty much self explanatory, no hidden meaning behind it, evil shall be destroyed for good, reduced to ashes. Those ashes will then give way to the greatest urban renewal project of all time when God in Revelation 21:5 says;
“Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5, KJV)
2 Peter 3:13 says that “in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13).
The millennium will have served its purpose. God’s new heaven and earth will be founded on trust, because every inhabitant will have had 1000 years to review the record of God’s dealing with sin and sinners, confirming God’s mercy and justice. Because of the millennium, each one will know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that God has saved and transformed as many as would let Him. They will know that He reluctantly ended the existence of the others only after they had rejected every opportunity for change.
To learn more about the Millennium and the end of Earth’s history, join our Bible Class on zoom, every Saturday afternoon at 3:30pm. For links to the zoom meeting visit our social media pages below:
My next article will look at the topic “Pleasures Forevermore”