Revelation 20:4

Verse Revelation 20:4. I saw thrones] Christianity established in the earth, the kings and governors being all Christians.

Reigned with Christ a thousand years.] I am satisfied that this period should not be taken literally. It may signify that there shall be a long and undisturbed state of Christianity; and so universally shall the Gospel spirit prevail, that it will appear as if Christ reigned upon earth; which will in effect be the case, because his Spirit shall rule in the hearts of men; and in this time the martyrs are represented as living again; their testimony being revived, and the truth for which they died, and which was confirmed by their blood, being now everywhere prevalent. As to the term thousand years, it is a mystic number among the Jews. Midrash Tillin, in Psalms 90:15, Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, adds, "by Babylon, Greece, and the Romans; and in the days of the Messiah. How many are the days of the Messiah? Rab. Elieser, the son of R. Jose, of Galilee, said, The days of the Messiah are a thousand years."

Sanhedrin, fol. 92, 1, cited by the Aruch, under the word says: "There is a tradition in the house of Elias, that the righteous, whom the holy blessed God shall raise from the dead, shall not return again to the dust; but for the space of a thousand years, in which the holy blessed God shall renew the world, they shall have wings like the wings of eagles, and shall fly above the waters." It appears therefore that this phraseology is purely rabbinical. Both the Greeks and Latins have the same form of speech in speaking on the state of the righteous and wicked after death. There is something like this in the Republic of Plato, book x., p. 322, edit. Bip., where, speaking of Erus, the son of Armenius, who came to life after having been dead twelve days, and who described the states of departed souls, asserting "that some were obliged to make a long peregrination under the earth before they arose to a state of happiness, ειναι δετηνπορειανχιλιετη, for it was a journey of a thousand years," he adds, "that, as the life of man is rated at a hundred years, those who have been wicked suffer in the other world a ten-fold punishment, and therefore their punishment lasts a thousand years."

A similar doctrine prevailed among the Romans; whether they borrowed it from the Greeks, or from the rabbinical Jews, we cannot tell.

Thus Virgil, speaking of the punishment of the wicked in the infernal regions, says: -

Has omnes, ubi MILLE rotam volvere per annos,

Lethaeum ad fluvium Deus evocat agmine magno:

Scilicet immemores supera ut convexa revisant,

Rursus et incipiant in corpora velle reverti

AEN., lib. vi., 748.

"But when a thousand rolling years are past,

So long their dreary punishment shall last,

Whole droves of spirits, by the driving god,

Are led to drink the deep Lethean flood

In large, forgetful draughts, to sleep the cares

Of their past labours and their irksome years;

That, unremembering of its former pain,

The soul may clothe itself with flesh again."

How the apostle applies this general tradition, or in what sense he may use it, who can tell?