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New Defender's Study Bible Notes

20:4 given unto them. Peace and righteousness will finally reign on the earth, under the iron rule of Christ and His resurrected saints (Revelation 2:26-27; 19:15; I Corinthians 6:2-3), and it will endure a thousand years. Furthermore, the catastrophic changes on the earth’s surface during the tribulation judgments will have restored the gentle topography and protecting vapor canopy over the earth (Isaiah 40:4; Psalm 148:4-6; etc.), so that the primeval “very good” condition of the whole world (Genesis 1:31) will be restored in large measure. Harmony also will be restored between men and animals, and people will again have only one language and will live to great ages (Isaiah 11:6-9; Zephaniah 3:9; Isaiah 65:20).


20:4 beheaded. Evidently, those who refuse the beast’s mark will be executed by the guillotine.


20:4 lived. The “souls” of the martyrs of the tribulation will have been resting “under” the heavenly altar (Revelation 6:9-11) until the seven years of tribulation are done, but then will apparently be resurrected to join all the other raptured and resurrected saints of all the ages.


20:4 reigned. The saints will all be “kings and priests” (note Revelation 20:6) under their Lord, Jesus Christ, with various degrees of authority as based on faithfulness of service while in this present life (note Revelation 1:6; 5:10; Matthew 19:28; Luke 19:17, 19).


20:5 lived not again. This phrase clearly indicates bodily resurrection after bodily death. The unsaved dead obviously will not live again spiritually, for they are in hades and will ultimately be in the lake of fire. In fact, the term “resurrection” itself occurs over forty times in the New Testament, and always refers to the resurrection of the body.


20:5 finished. Jesus had referred to “the resurrection of life” and “the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28-29), and so had Daniel (Daniel 12:2) but here it is revealed for the first time that the first resurrection will be completed a thousand years before the second. The word “is” does not appear in the Greek. The sense probably is that “this completes the first resurrection (note I Corinthians 15:22,23; Matthew 27:52-53; Revelation 11:11).


20:6 second death. The second death must be a bodily death, imposed after the second resurrection on all those who still are spiritually dead in their sins and trespasses (note Ephesians 2:1; Revelation 20:13-14).


20:6 priests of God. The resurrected saints will be both kings and priests (Revelation 1:6), exercising both judicial rule (I Corinthians 6:2) and religious ministries in relation to the growing human populations on earth. They may be ministering to those who had died or been raptured while still “babes in Christ,” either infants physically or spiritually. These somehow must be brought to full maturity in Christ, both physically and spiritually, and the already-matured saints could conceivably be participants in their further growth.


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