Revelation 20 is a short chapter, but it is full of so much information. Yesterday, I shared my favorite part of that chapter - the reference to millennial years of peace in Christ's Kingdom on the earth. Today I'd like to talk about a key factor that makes peace possible - the binding of Satan.The chapter begins with an angel coming down from heaven carrying a heavy chain and the keys to the bottomless pit. Satan is bound and cast into the pit for 1,000 years. He is bound, not in literal chains but by the priesthood of God. He stays bound by that power and by the righteousness of the people. At the end of the 1,000 years, he is set loose for a short time to tempt and torment man before he is cast into the pit for the rest of eternity.
This bottomless pit is not hell or Sheol. Sheol is the spirit prison where the disobedient wait. The Apostle Peter taught that Christ preached unto the spirits in prison during the time His body was in the tomb (see 1 Peter 3: 18, 19.) He describes those spirits as those which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water (v. 20.) He went on to say that we are also saved by water through baptism (see v. 21.)
If we are saved by water - and we are - and baptism is necessary for salvation - and it is - then why did Christ preach His gospel to those spirits in Sheol if salvation were not possible? The Apostle Paul gives us the answer in an "oh, by the way" fashion: Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead? (1st Corinthians 15: 29) Just as Christ's atonement was a vicarious work of salvation for each of us, so, too, is baptism by the living for the dead a vicarious work that makes salvation possible for those spirits in prison. Understanding this makes Jesus' preaching to those spirits comprehensible.
No, the bottomless pit is something far different from and far worse than hell. Modern-day revelation tells us that the only souls that will know how awful it is are those souls ordained unto this condemnation. (Doctrine and Covenants 76:48) Hell or Sheol has an end in the final judgment. The bottomless pit does not.
God is loving, gracious, and merciful. He wants His children to come unto Him. He does everything to entice them without robbing them of their agency. Those who are condemned to the pit described in Revelation 20 are not casual sinners. They are deliberate rebels. They know the Savior and still crucify Him in their hearts. For them, there is no forgiveness. How sad that is.
Text copyright Gebara Education April 2013
Picture of angel with chain from www.secondcomingofchristjesus.com
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