Conclusion of Judges For A Thousand Years

Thrones -144,000 of them - are prepared for these anointed conquerors who are "bought from among mankind as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb." (Revelation 14:1, 4) "Yes," continues John, "I saw the souls of those executed with the ax for the witness they bore to Jesus and for speaking about God, and those who had worshiped neither the wild beast nor its image and who had not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand." (Revelation 20:4b) Among those kings, then, are the anointed Christian martyrs who earlier, at the opening of the fifth seal asked Jehovah how much longer he would wait to avenge their blood. At that time, they were given a white robe and told to wait a little longer. But now they have been avenged through the devastating of Babylon the Great, the destruction of the nations by the King of kings and Lord of lords, and the abyssing of Satan. -Revelation 6:9-11; 17:16; 19:15, 16.

Were all these 144,000 royal judges physically "executed with the ax?" Likely, relatively few of them were in a literal sense. This expression, though doubtless is intended to embrace all those anointed Christians who endure mardyrdom in one way or another. (Matthew 10:22, 28) Certainly, Satan would like to have executed all of them with the ax, but, in fact, not all of Jesus' anointed brothers dies as martyrs. Many of them die of disease or old age. Such ones, however, also belong to the group that John now sees. The death of all of them is, in a sense, sacrificial. (Romans 6:3-5) Additionally,. none of them were part of the world. Hence, all of them have been hated by the world and, in effect, become dead in its eyes. (John 15:19; 1 Corinthians 4:13) None of them worshiped the wild beast or its image, and when they died, none of them carried the mark of the beast. All of them died as conquerors. -1 John 5:4; Revelation 2:7; 3:12; 12:11.

Now these conquerors live again! John reports: " And they came to life and ruled as kings with the Christ for a thousand years." (Revelation 20:4c) Does this mean that these judges are not resurrected until after the destruction of the nations and the abyssing of Satan and his demons? No. Most of them are already very much alive, since they rode with Jesus against the nations at Armageddon. (Revelation 2:26, 27; 19:14) Indeed, Paul indicated that their resurrection commences soon after the beginning of Jesus' presence in 1914 and that some are resurrected before others. (1 Corinthians 15:51-54; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17) Therefore, their coming to life occurs over a period of time as they individually receive the gift of immortal life in the heavens. - 2 Thessalonians 1:7; 2 Peter 3:11-14.

Their reigning ans judging will be for a thousand years. Is this a literal thousand years, or should we view it symbolically as being an undefined, long period of time? "Thousands " may means a large, indefinite number, as at Samuel 21:11. But here the "thousand" is literal, since it appears three times in Revelation 20:5-7 as "the thousand years." Paul called the time of judgment "a day"when he stated: "He [God] has set a day in which he purposes to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness." (Acts 17:31) Since Peter tells us that one day with Jehovah is as a thousand years, it is appropriate that at his Day of judgment be a literal thousand years." - 2Peter 3:8.

Next time: The Rest Of The Dead

Revelation Its Grand Climax At Hand! Watchtower Bible And Tract Society, 1988