Chapter 7.–What is Written in the Revelation of John Regarding the Two Resurrections, and the Thousand Years, and What May Reasonably Be Held on These Points.

The evangelist John has spoken of these two resurrections in the book
which is called the Apocalypse, but in such a way that some Christians
do not understand the first of the two, and so construe the passage
into ridiculous fancies. For the Apostle John says in the foresaid
book, “And I saw an angel come down from heaven. . . . Blessed and holy
is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second
death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ,
and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” [1339] Those who, on the
strength of this passage, have suspected that the first resurrection is
future and bodily, have been moved, among other things, specially by
the number of a thousand years, as if it were a fit thing that the
saints should thus enjoy a kind of Sabbath-rest during that period, a
holy leisure after the labors of the six thousand years since man was
created, and was on account of his great sin dismissed from the
blessedness of paradise into the woes of this mortal life, so that
thus, as it is written, “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years,
and a thousand years as one day,” [1340] there should follow on the
completion of six thousand years, as of six days, a kind of seventh-day
Sabbath in the succeeding thousand years; and that it is for this
purpose the saints rise, viz., to celebrate this Sabbath. And this
opinion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys
of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual, and consequent on the
presence of God; for I myself, too, once held this opinion. [1341]
But, as they assert that those who then rise again shall enjoy the
leisure of immoderate carnal banquets, furnished with an amount of meat
and drink such as not only to shock the feeling of the temperate, but
even to surpass the measure of credulity itself, such assertions can be
believed only by the carnal. They who do believe them are called by
the spiritual Chiliasts, which we may literally reproduce by the name
Millenarians. [1342] It were a tedious process to refute these
opinions point by point: we prefer proceeding to show how that passage
of Scripture should be understood. [1343]

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself says, “No man can enter into a strong
man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man”
[1344] –meaning by the strong man the devil, because he had power to
take captive the human race; and meaning by his goods which he was to
take, those who had been held by the devil in divers sins and
iniquities, but were to become believers in Himself. It was then for
the binding of this strong one that the apostle saw in the Apocalypse
“an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss, and a
chain in his hand. And he laid hold,” he says, “on the dragon, that
old serpent, which is called the devil and Satan, and bound him a
thousand years,”–that is, bridled and restrained his power so that he
could not seduce and gain possession of those who were to be freed.
Now the thousand years may be understood in two ways, so far as occurs
to me: either because these things happen in the sixth thousand of
years or sixth millennium (the latter part of which is now passing), as
if during the sixth day, which is to be followed by a Sabbath which has
no evening, the endless rest of the saints, so that, speaking of a part
under the name of the whole, he calls the last part of the
millennium–the part, that is, which had yet to expire before the end
of the world–a thousand years; or he used the thousand years as an
equivalent for the whole duration of this world, employing the number
of perfection to mark the fullness of time. For a thousand is the cube
of ten. For ten times ten makes a hundred, that is; the square on a
plane superficies. But to give this superficies height, and make it a
cube, the hundred is again multiplied by ten, which gives a thousand.
Besides, if a hundred is sometimes used for totality, as when the Lord
said by way of promise to him that left all and followed Him “He shall
receive in this world an hundredfold;” [1345] of which the apostle
gives, as it were, an explanation when he says, “As having nothing, yet
possessing all things,” [1346] –for even of old it had been said, The
whole world is the wealth of a believer,–with how much greater reason
is a thousand put for totality since it is the cube, while the other is
only the square? And for the same reason we cannot better interpret
the words of the psalm, “He hath been mindful of His covenant for ever,
the word which He commanded to a thousand generations,” [1347] than by
understanding it to mean “to all generations.”

“And he cast him into the abyss,”–i.e., cast the devil into the
abyss. By the abyss is meant the countless multitude of the wicked
whose hearts are unfathomably deep in malignity against the Church of
God; not that the devil was not there before, but he is said to be cast
in thither, because, when prevented from harming believers, he takes
more complete possession of the ungodly. For that man is more
abundantly possessed by the devil who is not only alienated from God,
but also gratuitously hates those who serve God. “And shut him up, and
set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more till
the thousand years should be fulfilled.” “Shut him up,”–i.e.,
prohibited him from going out, from doing what was forbidden. And the
addition of “set a seal upon him” seems to me to mean that it was
designed to keep it a secret who belonged to the devil’s party and who
did not. For in this world this is a secret, for we cannot tell
whether even the man who seems to stand shall fall, or whether he who
seems to lie shall rise again. But by the chain and prison-house of
this interdict the devil is prohibited and restrained from seducing
those nations which belong to Christ, but which he formerly seduced or
held in subjection. For before the foundation of the world God chose
to rescue these from the power of darkness, and to translate them into
the kingdom of the Son of His love, as the apostle says. [1348] For
what Christian is not aware that he seduces nations even now, and draws
them with himself to eternal punishment, but not those predestined to
eternal life? And let no one be dismayed by the circumstance that the
devil often seduces even those who have been regenerated in Christ, and
begun to walk in God’s way. For “the Lord knoweth them that are His,”
[1349] and of these the devil seduces none to eternal damnation. For
it is as God, from whom nothing is hid even of things future, that the
Lord knows them; not as a man, who sees a man at the present time (if
he can be said to see one whose heart he does not see), but does not
see even himself so far as to be able to know what kind of person he is
to be. The devil, then, is bound and shut up in the abyss that he may
not seduce the nations from which the Church is gathered, and which he
formerly seduced before the Church existed. For it is not said “that
he should not seduce any man,” but “that he should not seduce the
nations”–meaning, no doubt, those among which the Church exists–”till
the thousand years should be fulfilled,”–i.e., either what remains of
the sixth day which consists of a thousand years, or all the years
which are to elapse till the end of the world.

The words, “that he should not seduce the nations till the thousand
years should be fulfilled,” are not to be understood as indicating that
afterwards he is to seduce only those nations from which the
predestined Church is composed, and from seducing whom he is restrained
by that chain and imprisonment; but they are used in conformity with
that usage frequently employed in Scripture and exemplified in the
psalm, “So our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until He have mercy
upon us,” [1350] –not as if the eyes of His servants would no longer
wait upon the Lord their God when He had mercy upon them. Or the order
of the words is unquestionably this, “And he shut him up and set a seal
upon him, till the thousand years should be fulfilled;” and the
interposed clause, “that he should seduce the nations no more,” is not
to be understood in the connection in which it stands, but separately,
and as if added afterwards, so that the whole sentence might be read,
“And He shut him up and set a seal upon him till the thousand years
should be fulfilled, that he should seduce the nations no more,”–i.e.,
he is shut up till the thousand years be fulfilled, on this account,
that he may no more deceive the nations.

[1339] Rev. xx. 1-6. The whole passage is quoted.

[1340] 2 Pet. iii. 8.

[1341] Serm.259.

[1342] Milliarii.

[1343] [Augustin, who had formerly himself entertained chiliastic
hopes, revolutionized the prevailing ante-Nicene view of the
Apocalyptic millennium by understanding it of the present reign of
Christ in the Church. See Schaff, Church History, vol. ii. 619.--P.S.]

[1344] Mark iii. 27; “Vasa” for “goods.”

[1345] Matt. xix. 29.

[1346] 2 Cor. vi. 10.

[1347] Ps. cv. 8.

[1348] Col. i. 13.

[1349] ^ 2 Tim. ii. 19.

[1350] Ps. cxxiii. 2.