In my write-up today on G.K. Beale's The Book of Revelation: A Commentary
on the Greek Text, I will highlight a passage from the book and comment
on it, as I give the passage context for the reader and evaluate it.
On page 988, Beale states:
"Rev.
12:2-5 telescopes this process of Satanic oppression against the
covenant community climaxing with Christ's death and resurrection. All
who subsequently identify with Jesus as true Israel begin to fulfill the
commission to be a light to the nations, so that Satan's veil of
deception over the nations is lifted (cf. Isa. 49:6; Luke 2:32; Acts
13:47; 26:18, 23). This means that the devil will not be able to stop
the spread of the preaching of the gospel or its expanding reception
(=the church) during most of the age preceding Christ's return. So
Christ commands his followers to 'make disciples of all the nations'
(Matt. 28:19). The gospels will 'be preached in the whole world for a
witness to all the nations, and then the end will come' (Matt. 24:14).
But at the end of the age, directly preceding Christ's return, Satan
will again be allowed, for 'a little time,' to stop the preaching of the
gospel and to draw the curtain of delusion over the nations, especially
with the goal of mounting a devastating attack against the people of
God...A lethal attack must be launched against the corporate body of
Christ, as earlier against the individual Christ..."
Beale is an
amillennialist: He believes that the millennium in Revelation 20 applies
to the church age and is not the saints ruling with Christ on earth for
a thousand years right after Christ returns. Rather, for
Beale, the millennium is the saints ruling in heaven for a period of
time (Beale takes the thousand years to be symbolic rather than literal)
after Christ's death and resurrection, and it takes place before the
Second Coming of Christ. In my latest reading, Beale argued
that the serpent in Revelation 20 gathering Gog and Magog for battle
after the thousand years have passed is the same as the Battle of
Armageddon, the battle that immediately precedes Christ's return. For
Beale, Revelation 20 is recapping the final battle and the Second
Coming of Christ, the same way that things are recapped throughout the
Book of Revelation.
But does not Revelation 20 say that
Satan is bound during the millennium so that he will not deceive the
nations? How, then, can we be living in the millennium now, a time when
Satan deceives people? Beale argues that, since Christ's death
and resurrection, God has placed limits on Satan's deceptive activity,
which means that people can become spiritually enlightened and the
Gospel can spread throughout the earth. Beale provided
Scriptural references to that effect in the passage that I quoted. In
terms of the Book of Revelation itself, Beale refers to Revelation
3:7-9, which affirms that members of the synagogue of Satan in
Philadelphia can receive the truth, implying that Satan's deceptive
activity cannot stop them. Beale still appears to argue, however, that
demons can be active even when Satan is bound.
Beale may
have some valid points, for I agree with him that Christ's death and
resurrection did hit Satan pretty hard, for they deprived Satan of any
basis for accusing the saints as well as defeated death. But I have problems with Beale's scenario.
For one, Beale has spent pages arguing that much of the Book of
Revelation relates to the church age----the trumpets, the Beast, etc.
So does the time of the Beast's deception correspond with the time when
Satan is bound and is not deceiving the nations? That does not make a
great deal of sense to me. Beale, in defending his amillennialism,
appears to argue that the time of deception will come soon before
Christ's Second Coming, but that strikes me as different from what he
has been arguing elsewhere in the book, where he presents the Beast as a
reality throughout the church age. Second, Revelation 20 talks about
the serpent being bound so that he will not deceive the nations, which
implies (to me) that he won't be able to deceive them, not that his
deception will be limited. Third, I think that Revelation 3:7-9
concerns what will happen when Christ returns, not what happens during
the church age: God will subordinate the synagogue of Satan to the
church in Philadelphia. After all, the letters to the seven churches
have eschatological promises, so why can't that be one of them? And
fourth, Beale seems to be saying (if I understand him correctly) that
the Book of Revelation is envisioning the saints ruling in heaven for
some time before Christ returns. But, at some points in the book, Beale
is open to the possibility that John expected the end to occur in his
own time (though Beale sometimes equivocates on what the "end" is). In
that case, would John be envisioning a short millennium? (UPDATE: On page 1018, Beale speculates that the number one-thousand in
Revelation 20 does not relate to a long time but rather "the ultimate
victory of Christians who have suffered", for large numbers in
Revelation appear to concern the completeness or security of God's
people.)