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Notice what immediately follows this thousand years.

1. The devil is let loose. He who lets him loose is, of course, the same who bound him, and sealed him in the prison of the abyss. It seems like a great pity, after the world has rested for a thousand years, that this arch-enemy of its peace should again be let loose upon it. But there seems to be some sort of necessity for it. The statement to John was, that he must be loosed a little time (ver. 3). Some interest of righteousness and moral government renders it proper that he should be allowed this last limited freedom. If for nothing else, it is not unimportant that he should have this opportunity to prove how little an imprisonment of a thousand years had served to change him, or reform his malignity.

2. He seduces Gog and Magog into rebellion. He does not send forth this time to "the kings of the earth," for there are then no mortal kings to be led astray, but he goes direct to the people, insinuates his malice against the rule under which the King of kings has placed the nations, and seeks to persuade them into an attempt to overthrow it. To those who dwell in the outskirts and darker places of the earth, he wends his sullen way. Who Gog and Magog are we may not be able to tell. But the allusion to the "corners of the earth" as the regions whence these rebels come, sufficiently indicates that they are among the hindermost of peoples and the least advanced and cultured among the millennial nations. Satan succeeds in rendering them dissatisfied with the holy rule of God's glorified saints, and induces them to believe that they can successfully throw it off and crush it out, as the deluded kings under the Antichrist were persuaded a thousand years before.

3. A terrible disaster ensues. A madder thing than Gog and Magog's attempt was never undertaken upon earth. It is simply a march into the jaws of death, for no rebellion against the kings who then hold the reins of government can be tolerated. The insane war is quickly terminated. "There came down fire out of heaven and devoured them." Not a man of them escapes.

4. Satan meets his final perdition. He was imprisoned in the abyss before; but he is now "cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where also the Beast and the False Prophet [are]."

(J. A. Seiss, D. D.)

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KJV: And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,

WEB: And after the thousand years, Satan will be released from his prison,