Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

20:9-10
St. John’s image for the gathered people of God
combines Moses’ camp of the saints with David and
Solomon’s beloved City. This City is the New
Jerusalem, described in detail in 21:9-22:5. The
significance of this should not be missed: The City
exists during the Millennium (i.e. the period between
the First and Second Advents of Christ), which means
that the “new heaven and new earth” (21:1) are a
present as well as future reality. The New Creation will
exist in consummate form after the Final Judgment, but
it exists, definitively and progressively, in the present
age (2 Cor. 5:17).
The apostates rebel, and Satan’s forces briefly surround
the Church; but there is not a moment of doubt about
the outcome of the conflict. In fact, there is no real
conflict at all, for the rebellion is immediately crushed:
Fire came down from heaven and devoured them, as
it had the wicked citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah
(Gen. 19:24-25), and the soldiers of Ahaziah who came
against Elijah (2 Kings 1:10, 12). Is this to be a literal
fire at the end of the world? That seems probable,
although we must remember that St. John is now
showing us “a world of symbols too shadowy and distant
even to be disputed.” 42 Acknowledging that this firefall
may refer to “that blow wherewith Christ in His
coming is to strike those persecutors of the Church
whom He shall then find alive upon earth,” St.
Augustine proposed another explanation: “In this place
‘fire out of heaven’ is well understood of the firmness of
the saints [cf. 11:5], wherewith they refuse to yield
obedience to those who rage against them. For the firmament
is ‘heaven,’ by whose firmness these assailants
shall be pained with blazing zeal, for they shall be impotent
to draw away the saints to the party of Antichrist.
This is the fire which shall devour them, and this is
‘from God’; for it is by God’s grace the saints become
unconquerable, and so torment their enemies.” 43
In any case, the basic point of the text is that, in
contrast to the armies of the Beast who were “killed”
(i.e., converted) by the sword from the mouth of the
Word of God (19:15, 21), these self-conscious rebels of
the end are utterly destroyed. All opposition to the
Kingdom of God is completely eliminated. The Dragon
never really had a chance – his release from the Abyss
had been a trap from the very beginning, intended
merely to draw his forces out into the open, to make
them visible in order to destroy them. Terry comments:
“It is a great symbolic picture, and its one great
teaching is clear beyond the possibility of doubt or
misunderstanding, namely, that Satan and his forces
must all ultimately perish. This is written for the
comfort and confidence of the saints. But that final
victory is in the far future, at the close of the Messianic
age, and it is here simply outlined in apocalyptic
symbols. Any presumption, therefore, of determining
specific events of the future from this grand symbolism
must be regarded as in the nature of the case a species
of worthless and misleading speculation.” 44
Without descending into “misleading speculation,” it is
valid to ask: Why will the nations rebel after living in a
Christianized world-order? In his thought-provoking
study of “Common Grace, Eschatology, and Biblical
Law: Gary North explains that both the regenerate
culture and the unregenerate culture, as “wheat” and
“tares,” develop historically toward greater consistency
to their presuppositions – in Cornelius Van Til’s phrase,
“epistemological self-consciousness.” Over time, as
Christians conform themselves more fully to God’s
commands and thereby receive His blessings, they
become more powerful and attain increasing dominion.
But what will happen to the unbelievers, as they
become more self-conscious? North writes: “In the last
days of this final era in human history [i.e., at the end
of the Millennium], the satanists will still have the
trappings of Christian order about them. Satan has to
sit on God’s lap, so to speak, in order to slap His face –
or try to. Satan cannot be consistent to his own
philosophy of autonomous order and still be a threat to
God. An autonomous order leads to chaos and
impotence. He knows that there is no neutral ground in
philosophy. He knew Adam and Eve would die
spiritually on the day that they ate the fruit. He is a
good enough theologian to know that there is one God,
and he and his host tremble at the thought (James
2:19). When demonic men take seriously his lies about
the nature of reality, they become impotent, sliding off
(or nearly off) God’s lap. It is when satanists realize that
Satan’s official philosophy of chaos and antinomian
lawlessness is a lie that they become dangerous . . . .
They learn more of the truth, but they pervert it and try
to use it against God’s people.
“Thus, the biblical meaning of epistemological selfconsciousness
is not that the satanist becomes
consistent with Satan’s official philosophy (chaos), but
rather that Satan’s host becomes consistent with what
Satan really believes: that order, law, power are the
product of God’s hated order. They learn to use law and
order to build an army of conquest. In short, they use
common grace – knowledge of the truth – to pervert the
truth and to attack God’s people. They turn from a false
knowledge offered to them by Satan, and they adopt a
perverted form of truth to use in their rebellious plans.
They mature, in other words. Or, as C. S. Lewis has put
into the mouth of his fictitious character, the senior
devil Screwtape, when materialists finally believe in
Satan but not in God, then the war is over. Not quite;
when they believe in God, know He is going to win,
and nevertheless strike out in fury – not blind fury, but
fully self-conscious fury – at the works of God, then the
war is over.” 45
North concludes: “Does the postmillennialist believe
that there will be faith in general on the earth when
42. Farrer, p. 208.
43. St. Augustine, The City of God, XX.12.
44. Terry, Biblical Apocalyptic, p. 455.
45. Gary North, “Common Grace, Eschatology, and Biblical Law: Appendix C,
below, pp. 657f.
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