Between Two Advents (Revelation 20) Series

Good morning! Please turn in your Bibles to Revelation 20.

We come into worship this morning with what may be a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of circumstances, at least as far as a church calendar goes.

It’s the first Sunday of Advent, when we begin focusing on Jesus’ coming into the world.

It’s also the fifth Sunday of November, and at Glynwood, we observe communion on fifth Sundays.

Aaaand… it’s the seventh Sunday of our study through Revelation, where we just so happen to be talking about Jesus’ Second Coming.

All on the same Sunday.

What are the odds?

In one service, we’re talking about the first coming, the second coming, and the sacrament that connects both of them.

So let’s talk about the middle.

Sometimes the middle is great. The middle of an Oreo is the best part. A juicy, center cut steak is where all the flavor is. There are people who crave being in the middle of the action, the center of attention.

But there are seasons in life when the hardest place to be is the middle.

Not the beginning, not the end—just the in-between.

Middle school is the perfect example.

You aren’t a little kid anymore, but you aren’t a teenager yet.

You’re too old for recess, but too young to drive.

You’re stuck between who you were and who you’re becoming.

And everything feels awkward and uncertain.

There’s those seasons of being between deployments— when you’ve left one thing behind but the next thing hasn’t started.

There’s the loneliness during the time between the death of a believing spouse and the day you’ll see him or her again.

There’s the long stretch between your prayer and God’s answer.

And spiritually, the Bible says we’re living in the greatest “in-between” of them all.

Christ has come—that was the First Advent.

He lived, died, rose again, ascended, and now reigns.

That’s the “already.”

But Christ is coming again—the Second Advent.

The day when every wrong is made right, every tear wiped away, every enemy defeated, and every believer welcomed home.

And right now…

we are caught between those two Advents.

We live in the tension between what Christ has already accomplished

and what He has not yet completed.

And Revelation 20 is written for people who feel that tension.

It’s written for Christians in the in-between—

to remind us in the end, Jesus gets His victory,

in the end, the Church gets her homecoming,

in the end, the devil gets his due,

and in the end, God gets His day in court.

I want to go ahead and read Revelation 20. We are going to read all of it. And as we read, I want us to read it with the awareness of the good things that “not yet” in order to give us hope and peace and endurance for the “in betwen” we are experiencing now.

[Read, Pray]

Before we walk through the rest of Revelation 20, let me say a quick word about this “thousand-year reign,” the millennium. Christians have understood it in three main ways.

• Premillennialism says Jesus returns before a literal thousand-year earthly kingdom.

• Postmillennialism sees the gospel transforming the world, leading to a long age of peace, and then Christ returns.

• Amillennialism understands the thousand years symbolically—referring to the whole period between Christ’s resurrection and His return.

Since some of you may wonder where I personally land: the amillennial view makes the most sense to me. I believe Christ’s reign began with His resurrection, when Satan’s power was decisively broken and Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father. And if that’s true, then the millennium isn’t a literal thousand years—it’s the entire church age. I believe Christ is reigning right now, and has been ever since He ascended to heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.

You might say, “But wait a minute—Revelation talks about Satan being bound for a thousand years, and it sure doesn’t feel like he is bound.” And you’re right. It doesn’t. But Scripture doesn’t say he’s bound from all activity; it says he’s bound from deceiving the nations. In other words, he’s restrained, the word the Apostle Paul uses in 2 Thessalonians 2.. The gospel is going out. People from every tribe and tongue and nation are responding to Christ. The kingdom is expanding. Satan is limited in a very real way from stopping that.

But Revelation 20 also describes a day when Satan is permitted to wreak havoc on the nations one final time before Jesus returns. His influence will surge briefly before the final judgment—but it won’t change the outcome.

I also believe Christ returns once—visibly, gloriously, decisively. Some Christians believe Jesus will return in two stages: first to rapture the church, then again after a time of tribulation. But as I read Scripture, I don’t find much support for two separate comings. Which means the church will be here through all the ups and downs of history, including that final surge of evil. We endure, we witness, and we remain faithful until Jesus comes.