AFTER BEING imprisoned for a thousand years, Satan returns and leads “the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle”. Is this Armageddon or a second war altogether?

We believe the millennial reign is a literal thousand year period that follows Armageddon, and so the conflict described in Revelation 20:7–10 is a second war. How is it possible if, as we’ve said in an earlier episode, Gog is the Old Testament concept of Antichrist, and the Beast was thrown in the lake of fire before the thousand years (Rev. 19:20)?

Excellent question. To be honest, we don’t know. It’s possible “Gog” is a title rather than one specific entity. It may also be that because Gog is a spirit being and not a man, the normal rules of life and death don’t apply. However, we must admit that amillennialists, who don’t believe in a literal thousand-year period of Satan’s confinement, would say that the answer is simple: Revelation 20 and Ezekiel 38–39 describe the same war.

We disagree, mainly because we find it impossible to believe the world wold be in its present state while Satan is bound and Jesus reigns on Earth.

We also discuss the fate of the dead at the Great White Throne Judgment. There appears to be something different about the dead who come from the sea and those given up by Death and Hades. The sea is a biblical symbol of the abyss and primordial chaos (i.e., Leviathan). In Job 26:5–6 we read, “The [Rephaim] tremble under the waters and their inhabitants. Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering.” The parallel verses suggest a link between the Rephaim (spirits of the Nephilim destroyed in the Flood) and the sea (the abyss/chaos), and Sheol (place of the dead) and Abaddon (which Derek argued in The Second Coming of Saturn was the Hebrew concept of Tartarus).

Note that Job 26:5 in the Septuagint is rendered, “Are not giants brought forth from beneath the water and its neighbors?”

In short, we believe Revelation 20:13–14 is not just a description of human dead, but the final judgment of the Nephilim.